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THE HOLY StPULCHRE. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

LINDSAY & BLAKISTON. 



HISTORY 



THE CRUSADES 



m, irogrtss, iraiJ 



BY 



yt- 



,3/r 



MAJOR PROCTOR, 

OP THE ROYAL 3IILITARY ACADEMY. 



WITH OYER Ols'E HUNDRED AND FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
LINDSAY & BLAKISTON 

18 54. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S54, by 

LINDSAY & BLAKISTOX, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States fbr the Eastern 
District of Pennsylvania. 

STEREOTYPED BT L. JOHXSON A CO. 
FQILADELPUIA. 



'? 




CKLSADKHS IN SKillT of .1 KKUSALKM. 

I'Hjre li5. 




^^§))»«»+- 



At the present time, when a misunderstanding concerning 

the Holy Places at Jerusalem has given rise to a war involving 

four of the great Powers of Europe, the mind naturally reverts 

to the period when nearly all the military power of Europe made 

a descent on Palestine for the recovery of them from the 

possession of the infidels. It would seem that the interest in 

these places is still alive ; and the history of the Holy Wars 

of Palestine during a considerable portion of the Middle Ages, 

may be supposed to form an attractive theme for the general 

reader. 

Under this impression Major Proctor's excellent "History 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

of the Crusades" has been carefully revised, some additions 
made, a series of illustrative engravings, executed by iBrst-rate 
artists, introduced, and the edition is now respectfully sub- 
mitted to the public. 

The editor, in the performance of liis duty, has been struck 
with the masterly, clear, and lucid method in which the author 
has executed the work — a work of considerable difficulty, when 
we consider the long period and the multiplicity of important 
events embraced in the history; nor has the editor been less 
impressed with the vigorous style, and the happy power of giv- 
ing vividness, colour and thrilling interest to the events which 
he narrates, so conspicuous in Major Proctor's history. No 
other historian of the Crusades has succeeded in comprising so 
complete and entertaining a narrative in so reasonable a 

compass. 

American Editor. 




CHAPTER I. 

%]lt imi €xni\lt 

Section I. 
Causes of the Crusades Page 17 

Section II. 
Preaching of the First Crusade 41 

Section III. 
Peter the Hermit. — The Crusade undertaken by the People 55 

Section IV. 

The Crusade undertaken by Kings and Nobles 65 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

Section V. 
The First Crusaders at Constantinople Page 79 

Section' VI. 
The Siege of Nice 96 

Section VII. 
Defeat of the Turks.— Seizure of Edessa 105 

Section VIII. 
Seige and Capture of Antioch by the Crusaders 119 

Section IX. 
Defence of Antioch by the Crusaders 130 

Section X. 
Seige and Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders 153 



CHAPTER II. 

Section I. 
State of the Latin Kingdom 176 

Section II. 
Origin of the Orders of Religious Chivalry 194 

Section III, 
Fall of Edessa. — Preaching of the Second Crusade 205 

Section IV. 
Louis VII. and Conrad III. in Palestine 214 



CONTENTS. 7 

CHAPTER III. 

Section I. 
The Rise of Saladin Page 224 

Section II. 
Battle of Tiberias, and Fall of Jerusalem 238 

Section III. 
The Germans undertake the Crusade 248 

Section IV. 
Richard Coeur de Lion in Palestine 257 



CHAPTER IV. 

Section I. 
The French, Germans, and Italians unite in the Crusade 285 

Section II. 
Affairs of the Eastern Empire , 298 

Section III. 
Expedition against Constantinople 311 

Section IV. 

Second Siege of Constantinople 327 

4 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

Ik 'fast imx (Ln\$i\his- 

Section I. 
History of the Latin Empire of the East Paije 342 

Section II. 
The Fifth Crusade 361 

Section III. 
The Sixth Crusade 380 

Section IV. 
The Seventh Crusade 401 

Section V. 
The Eighth Crusade 428 

CHAPTER VI. 
Consequences of the Crusades 453 





■'rusaders in sight of Jerusalem Frontispiece. 

The Holy Sepulchre Title. 

Head-piece to Preface page 3 

Head-piece to Contents 5 

Head-piece to Hlustrations 9 

Pope Urban II. preaching the First Crusade, at the Council of Cler- 
mont 13 

Head-piece to Chapter 1 17 

Ornamental Letter 17 

A Norman Knight 21 

The Normans conquering Sicily 22 

Charlemagne 26 

Mohammed 30 

Early Career of Mohammed 31 

Gregory VII 36 

9 



10 ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Robert Guiscard ordering his ships to he burned 38 

Tail-piece 40 

Peter the Hermit 41 

Ornamental Letter 41 

Peter the Hermit and the Patriarch of Jerusalem 42 

Peter the Hermit preaching the First Crusade 45 

Norman Armour 55 

Ornamental Letter 55 

Peter the Hermit leading the First Crusaders ^. 58 

Tail-piece G4 

Armour 05 

Henry IV 08 

Godfrey of Bouillon 09 

Siege of Rome 71 

Robert of Normandy and his Father 72 

A Crusader 79 

Ornamental Letter 79 

The Emperor Alexius 90 

Regalia 90 

Ornamental Letter 90 

Tail-piece 104 

Head-piece 103 

Ornamental Letter 105 

A Turkish Encampment 110 

Baldwin seizes Edessa 110 

Tail-piece 117 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 11 

PAGE 

Antioch 118 

Ornamental Letter 118 

KaraHissar 124 

Capture of Antioch by the Crusaders 128 

Robert of Normandy slaying the Turk 129 

Head-piece 130 

Ornamental Letter 130 

Bishop Adhemar blessing the Crusaders 141 

Tail-piece 152 

Jerusalem 153 

Ornamental Letter 153 

Mount Sion 157 

Godfrey of Bouillon 101 

Capture of Jerusalem 1G4 

Godfrey of Bouillon elected King of Jerusalem 172 

Tail-piece 175 

Ascalon 176 

Ornamental Letter 176 

Tancred 181 

Funeral of Baldwin I., King of Jerusalem 188 

Ruins of Tyre 190 

Tail-piece 193 

Institution of the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem 194 

Armour 1 94 

Ornamental Letter 195 



12 ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Grand-Master of the Knights of Malta 108 

Grand-Marshal of the Knights of Malta 199 

Malta -01 

Knights Templars 203 

Head-piece 205 

Ornamental Letter 205 

Queen Eleanor of Aquitaiue 211 

St. Bernard preaching the Second Crusade 211 

Tail-piece 213 

Head-piece 214 

Ornamental Letter 214 

Conrad III 217 

Passage of the Meander 218 

Louis VII. defending himself against the Turks 219 

Damascus 221 

Tail-piece 223 

Arab Encampment 224 

Ornamental Letter 224 

Noureddin marching on Antioch 228 

Shiracouch 231 

Saladin 23G 

Tail-piece 237 

Head-piece -38 

Ornamental Letter 238 

Mecca 240 

Tail-piece 247 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 13 

PAGE 

Head-piece 248 

Ornamental Letter 248 

Frederic Barbarossa 252 

Head-piece 257 

Ornamental Letter 257 

Richard Coeur De Lion 260 

Rhodes 202 

Siege of Acre 204 

Movable Towers 205 

Capitulation of Acre 206 

Tower and Battering-ram 206 

Richard Cceur'de Lion at Antiocli. 207 

Richard I. at Azotus 272 

Hebron 275 

Richard Coeur de Lion at Jaffa 280 

General View of Jerusalem 284 

Head-piece 285 

Ornamental Letter..^ 285 

Henry VI., Emperor of Germany 287 

Place of St. Mark's, Venice 293' 

Street in Constantinople 298 

Ornamental Letter 298 

Isaac Angelus 304 

Tail-piece 310 

Dandolo, Doge of Venice 311 - 

Ornamental Letter 311 



14 ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Theodore Lascaris u27 

Ornamental Letter 327 

Desecration of the Churclits 334 

Tower of St. Mark's, Venice 335 - 

Ceremony of raising an elected King ou a buckler 337 

Tail-piece, Gethsemene 341 

Baldwin I., Emperor of the East 342 

Ornamental Letter 342 

Baldwin II 354 

Head-piece 3G1 

Ornamental Lcttir 3G1 

William Longespee, Earl of Salisbur}- 3G4 

Capture of Damietta by the Crusaders 367 

Emperor Frederic II 372 

Head-piece 380 

Ornamental Letter 380 

Richard, Earl of Cornwall 382 

Frederic II 385 

Zingis Khan 391 

Tail-piece 400 

View on the Nile 401 

Ornamental Letter 401 

Blanche of Castile 403 

Ilaco, King of Norway 404 

Ships of the 13th Century 405 

St. Louis in captivity 416 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



15 



St. Louis entering Ptolemais 419 

Tail-piece 427 

Head-piece 428 

Ornamental Letter 428 

Death of St. Louis 431 

Edward L of England 432 

Attempt to assassinate Edwari] 435 

Funeral of Robert Guiscanl 452 

Head-piece 453 

Ornamental Letter 453 

Tail-piece 4G8 




■ T -.>-« 




POTK I KI5AN Jl. I'KKA(lll.N(i TlIK ClUSADE AT <;JiEH.MONT. 




HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES. 



CHAPTER I. 

t lirst Crttsabt 



FROM A. D. 1095 TO A. D. 1099. 



SECTION I.— CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 

^HE term Crusade is derived 
from the French word Craisade, 
and is employed to designate 
that series of extraordinary 
expeditions undertaken by the 
Western nations of Europe, 
during the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries, for the recovery of 
the Holy Land from the Saracens and Turks. The 
space of time consumed in these strange enterprises 

2 17 




18 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

extends over nearly, if not quite, two hundred years, 
and in whatever light we contemplate them, they con- 
stitute one of the most interesting chapters that is 
to be found in the annals of mankind. Nothing like 
them had been seen before in either the ancient or 
the modern world, and nothing like them has been 
seen since ; and it is the object of the present volume 
to investigate the causes which led to them, to de- 
scribe the incidents by which they were accompanied, 
and to estimate the consequences that followed from 
them. 

The predisposing circumstances wdiich led to those 
famous enterprises, and thereby impressed such singu- 
lar features on the history of the period, are to be 
sought rather in the general aspect and feelings of 
society during the ages immediately antecedent, than 
in the occurrence of any particular events. Amid 
the lawless violence which preceded and attended the 
settlement of the feudal system, the voice of religion 
could seldom be heard above the perpetual din of 
armed rapine; and her influence, instead of being 
habitually exercised over the consciences of men, was 
felt only with startling remorse in some brief interval 
of sickness or calamity. Then, the rude and super- 
stitious warrior, with the same untempered energy of 
passion, was prepared to rush at once from the perpe- 
tration of atrocious crime to seek its atonement in 
exercises of the severest penance. Equally among 
churchmen and laity, the devotional spirit of the 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 19 

times, such as it was, knew no other mode of recon- 
cilement with offended Heaven, than in these acts of 
mortification. But, if many sought to expiate their 
guilt in the passive austerities of the cloister, it was 
more congenial to the restless and enterprising charac- 
ter which marked the Northern mind, to embrace the 
encounter with fatigue and peril, as the surest test 
and the most acceptable tribute of repentant faith. 
The Romish clergy, therefore, probably only indulged 
instead of creating a popular inclination, when, in the 
eighth and ninth centuries, they began to commute 
the more ancient penances enjoined by the canons of 
the church, for pilgrimages to Rome, to the shrines 
of various saints, and above all to Jerusalem. The 
desire of visiting the places where celebrated events 
have occurred, seems, indeed, a curiosity too deeply 
implanted in our nature to belong to any particular 
time or condition of man ; but the associations con- 
nected with the hallowed scene of human redemption 
were calculated to sanctify this feeling with peculiar 
interest, and had rendered journeys to Jerusalem not 
uncommon in some of the earliest ages of Christianity. 
When this practice was communicated to the Gothic 
nations, the love of pilgrimages gradually became 
almost a universal passion; and though its objects 
were deformed by the grossness of superstition, and 
its course much diverted to Rome itself, and to those 
shrines in different countries at which pretended mi- 
racles were wrought, especially that of St. James at 



20 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

Compostella, in Spain, the stream of mistaken yet 
sincere devotion continued to set steadily toward the 
shores of Palestine. 

But the impulse which, above all others, had a tend- 
ency to increase the ardour for pilgrimages, arose 
from a growing belief, early in the tenth century, that 
the end of the world was at hand. It was imagined 
that the thousand years mentioned in the Apocalypse 
would speedily be fulfilled ; that the reign of Anti- 
christ approached ; and that the terrors of the last 
judgment would immediately follow.* In proportion 
as this erroneous interpretation of sacred prophecy 
gained wider credence, the Western World became 
violently agitated with fearful forebodings of the 
destruction which awaited the earth ; every delusive 
form of propitiation for sin, in penance and pilgri- 
mage, "was eagerly embraced ; and, as it was concluded 
that to visit the scenes of redemption was both a 
meritorious and a preservative act, multitudes annu- 
ally flocked to Jerusalem, to revive and recover those 
hopes of salvation which withered under the remem- 
brance of habitual guilt. When an expedient so qui- 
eting to the consciences of men in a state of society 



* 6%ron.Guil.Godelli, (in RecuetldesJIistoriensFran^ais, vol. x.,) p. 
2G2. De Vic et de Vaisette, Hist, de Languedoc, vol. ii. p. 86-117, &c. 
As E-obertson has remarked, (^ITist. of Charles V., vol. i. note 13,) 
even many of tlio charters of the tenth century have for preamble, 
'^ Appropinquante mundi tcrmino," &c., (seeing that the end of the 
world is at hand.) 



CAUSES OF TDE CRUSADES. 



21 




A Norman Knight. 

equally fruitful of crime and superstition, had once 
been discovered, inducements were not wanting for 
its repetition ; and the custom surpassed and survived 
its original impulse and occasion. Throughout the 
tenth and eleventh centuries, the passion for pilgrim- 
ages was ever on the increase ; and it is recorded of a 
single company which visited the Holy Sepulchre, 
about the middle of the latter age, that its numbers 
were no fewer than seven thousand persons.* 



* Ingulfus, Historia, p. 903, 904. 



oo 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 




The Normans conquering Sicily, 

Foremost amoiiG: the devotees, as amoiiir the war- 
riors of the times, were the Normans. That singular 
and high-spirited people, in every respect the most 
remarkable of the barbarian races, had no sooner be- 
come converts to Christianity, than they strangely 
infused into their religious profession the same wild 
and enthusiastic temper, the same ardour for adven- 
turous enterprise, which had distinguished their pagan 
career. The conquest of Southern Italy, which ori- 
ginated entirely in the casual return of their pilgrims 
from the Holy Land through that theatre of Saracen 
warfare,'"' is, in itself, a striking memorial both of their 
addiction to such religious journeyings, and of the 



* Leo Osticnsis, Chron. Man. Cassiii, lib. ii. c. 37. Giaunone, Is- 
ioria di NapoU, vol. ii. p. 7. 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 23 

equal readiness for either devout or martial achieve- 
ment by which they were animated. Traversing 
Italy in the route between their own land and the 
Mediterranean ports which communicated with Pales- 
tine, in small but well-armed bands, the Norman pil- 
grims were prepared alike, either to crave hospitality 
in the blessed name of the Cross, or to force their way 
at the point of the lance. Their victorious establish- 
ment in Italy tended to increase their intercourse with 
the East; their daring assaults upon the Byzantine 
empire, though foreign to our present subject, attest 
their undiminished thirst of enterprise ; and we shall 
find the sons of the Norman conquerors of the Sicilies 
and England figuring among the chief promoters and 
warriors of the First Crusade. 

Such a union of religious and martial ardour, how- 
ever, was by no means confined to the Normans ; and 
the eleventh century was marked, throughout Western 
Europe, by the general expansion of a spirit, of which 
the organized result may be numbered among the 
most active and powerful causes of the crusades. This 
was the institution of chivalry. The rude origin of 
a state of manners so extraordinary in itself, and so 
restricted to the descendants of the great Northern 
race,* is obviously to be found in those ceremonies 

* The want of all resemblance to the spirit of chivalry in the man- 
ners and sentiments of classical antiquity is so obvious, that it might 
seem a work of supererogation to insist on the fact ; if an accom- 
plished modern writer (Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 482) had 



I 



24 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

■which, among their ancestors in the German forests, 
attended the assumption* of arms by the youthful 

not, in rather an elaborate passage, cited the Achilles of Homer as a 
beautiful portraiture of the chivalric character " in its most general 
form." On this position it may, in the first place, be remarked as 
singular, that Mr. Hallam should number "a calm indifference to the 
cause in which he was engaged" among the qualities of the Homeric 
hero, as suggesting a parallel with the knightly character ; of which, 
enthusiastic and loyal devotion in enterprise formed the peculiar attri- 
butes. In the next place, the resentment of Achilles for the loss of 
Briseis merely as his captured property, is utterly repugnant to that 
principle of respectful idolatry for the fair, which every true knight 
cherished as an indispensable article in his creed of love and honour. 
In fact, the most irreconcilable distinction between the manners of 
the classical and Gothic ages rests, as we have before had occasion 
to remark, on the totally opposite estimation of woman. Finally, his 
conduct of Achilles, both in suffering the inferior herd of Greeks to 
strike the corpse of Hector, and in dragging the lifeless body of the 
noble and fallen antagonist at his chariot wheels, would have been 
held utterly abhorrent from chivalric ideas of courtesy; and Mr. 
Hallam, a few pages farther on, has quoted a passage from a chro- 
nicler of the thirtcceth century, which denounces the act of insulting 
the dead body of an enemy as the lowest depth of infamy. Thus, 
altogether, to say nothing of the absence of that dedication of the 
sword to the cause of Heaven, which, mistaken as it was, gave a 
religious impression to the knightly character, the portraiture of 
Achilles is completely destitute of those qualities of loyalty, devoted- 
ness to woman, and courtesy to enemies, which Mr. Hallam himself 
justly specifies as virtues essential to chivalry. That lofty energy 
of the soul which is inspired by contempt of death and thirst for 
glory, and displayed in daring and magnanimous achievement, con- 
stitutes, indeed, the vital essence of heroism under every form of 
society ; but into this lifespring of action, common to the Grecian 
and the Gothic warrior, it was the singular peculiarity of the chival- 
ric spirit to infuse the triple incentive and sentiment of religious, 
social, and amatory obligation ; and, instead of sustaining the parallel 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 25 

warrior.* In subsequent ages the same forms of mar- 
tial investiture, with little addition or variation, were 
preserved among the conquerors of the Roman empire, 
and perpetuated in every kingdom which they had 
founded. In the Lombard annals ; in a recorded act, 
as well as occasionally in the capitularies of Charle- 
magne ; and in the chronicles of the Anglo-Saxon era, 
are to be found sufficient evidencef of a common prac- 
tice in the ceremonial investiture of knighthood. We 
may here overleap the chain of circumstances which, 
in later connection with feudal and social obligations, 
imparted to the spirit of chivalry, which in the outset 
was only essentially martial, its more graceful virtues 
of loyalty and honour, courtesy and benevolence, 
generosity to enemies, protection to the feeble and the 
oppressed, and respectful tenderness to woman. To 
trace the growth of these beautiful attributes of chi- 
valry, as a moral and social system, belongs not to our 
present inquiry ; and it will suffice to notice in this 
place that admixture of religious ideas and duties with 
a military institution, which converted it into a ready 
engine of superstitious excitement, and singularly 



suggested, the Homeric representation, abounding as it does in native 
sublimity of conception, might, with more propriety, be selected for a 
sufficient example of the contrast between the heroic character in the 
two great romantic ages of the ancient and modern world. 

* Tacitus, De Moribus Germanorum, c. 13. 

■}■ Paulus Diaconus, De Gcstis Langohard, c. 23, 24. Vita Lu- 
dovici Piif ad Ann. 791. Malmsbury, lib. ii. c. 2. 



26 



THE FIRST CKUSADE. 




Charlaviagne. 

disposed the public mind of Europe for any enterprise 
of fanatical warfare. 

The exact epoch at which chivalry acquired a reli- 
gious character, it is neither easy, nor is it material, 
to ascertain. In the age of Charlemagne, and in his 
empire at least, the form of knightly investiture was 
certainly unattended by any vows or ecclesiastical 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 27 

ceremonies.* But, in the eleventh century, it had be- 
come common to invoke the aid of religion in the in- 
auguration of the knight ; his sword was laid on the 
altar, blessed, and even sometimes girded to his side, 
by the priest ; and his solemn vow dedicated its use 
to the service of Heaven, in the special defence of the 
church, as well as the general protection of the weak 
and the oppressed. The more complete conversion 
of the whole process of investiture into a religious 
ceremonial; the previous vigils, confession, prayer, 
and receipt of the sacrament ; the bath and the robe 
of white linen, as emblems of purification; all those 
preparations, in short, by which the entrance into the 
knightly career, was designedly assimilated to that into 
the monastic profession, formed the growth of rather 
later times.f But there is abundant proof of the suc- 
cess of the church, before the Crusades, in infusing some 
religious principle into the martial spirit of chivalry. J 
For this, justice has scarcely been extended to the 
motives of the Romish clergy by different classes of 
writers, who, whether from indignation at the real 
corruptions of that church, or from hostility to the 
cause of Christianity itself, can discover only unmin- 
gled evil in the ecclesiastical policy of the Middle Ages. 
But, apart from the lower and more interested purpose, 
in itself surely not unjustifiable, of converting the 

* Vita Lriidov. Pii, uLi siijjrd. 

f Dm Cange, Glossarium in vv. Anna, Miles, &c. 

J Du Cange, in v. Miles. Muratori, Antiq. Med. jEvi. Diss. liii. 



28 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

martial temper of lawless communities into a means 
of defence for the church, the clergy of the eleventh 
century appear to have laboured with a zeal and sin- 
cerity above suspicion, in mitigating a spirit which 
they could not subdue. Their efforts to soften the 
ferocity and harmonize the feelings of the times by 
their reprobation of private wars and judicial com- 
bats, are deserving of all praise ;* and there seems no 
reason to doubt that, in covering the ceremonies of 
chivalry with the sanction of religion, their policy 
was originally animated by a principle equally praise- 
worthy. In the same knightly vows which they de- 
manded or registered at the altar, engagements to ab- 
stain from secret perfidy and open wrong, to shield 
the oppressed, and to do justice to all Christian men, 
were at least mingled with the obligation of fidelity 
and protection to the church itself. The ultimate ex- 
tension of these pledges into the imaginary duty of 
warring to the utterance against all infidels, was, in- 
deed, as incompatible with the generally peaceful de- 
signs of the clergy, as it was repugnant to every genu- 
ine precept of the gospel. But, in a period so turbulent 
that even the ordinary social virtues could be no bet- 
ter exercised and protected than at the sword's point, 
a warlike and ignorant race passed, by an easy and 
obvious transition, into the monstrous error of believ- 
ing that the sincerity of their faith and the cause of 

* Gibbon, Decline and Fall, <Scc. vol. xi. p. 41. 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 29 

divine truth were to be proven and upheld by the 
same carnal weapon. 

This doctrine was too congenial both to the fierce 
manners and superstitious feelings of the laity to need 
the suggestions of the ecclesiastical order for its ex- 
citement ; and it may well be questioned whether the 
clergy directed or merely shared or obeyed the impulse 
of the times. They who can see nothing in the pil- 
grimizing and crusading madness of the tenth and 
eleventh centuries but the influence of a crafty sys- 
tem of ecclesiastical policy, attribute to the clergy a 
far greater superiority of intellect over the spirit of 
their age than they apparently possessed, only to fix 
the deeper stigma upon the abuse of their power. It 
is not only more probable in itself, but more consist- 
ent with historical evidence, to conclude that they 
were fervently imbued with the fanaticism which they 
are accused of having coolly excited : a vast number 
of prelates and inferior ecclesiastics shared in the toils 
and dangers of pilgrimages and Crusades; and the 
sincerity of the preachers and the warriors of those 
expeditions must, in general, be tried by the same 
standard of mistaken enthusiasm. In every sense, 
indeed, it was the union of religious and martial prin- 
ciples, first effected in the chivalric institutions, which 
prepared and prolonged the fanatical madness of 
Europe ; the profession of arms became hallowed by 
its presumed dedication to the service of Heaven ; and 
we may, therefore, enlarge on the definition of a cele- 



TUE FIRST CRUSADE. 




Jio/iammcd. 



brated writer, in pronouncing chivalry to have been at 
once both a principal cause and an enduring conse- 
quence of the Crusades.'-' 

Such, then, through the united influence of martial 
and superstitious feelings, were the circumstances 
which predisposed the nations of Western Europe for 
any enterprise of fanatical warfiire. The immediate 
occasion of the Crusades must be related in retrospect 
to the fall of Jerusalem, and the affiiirs of both the 
Byzantine and Mohammedan empires. During a long 
interval of above four centuries, between its cap- 
ture by Omar, and by the Seljukian Turks,f Jerusa- 



* Gibbon, Decline and Fall, &c. vol. xi. p. 41. 

f Jerusalem was captured by the Caliph Omar, a. d. 637, and by 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 



31 




Early career of Mohammed. 



lem had shared the vicissitudes of Saracen revoUition ; 
and the treatment both of its Christian inhabitants, 
and of the pilgrims who thronged to its sacred places, 
was variously affected by the temper of its Mussulman 
lords. After the fierce spirit of intolerance, which 
animated the Saracens in their early career of prose- 
lyting conquest, had subsided, and during the more 
tranquil period of the Khalifate, no obstacle was op- 
posed either to the exercise of worship by residents, 
or to the resort of devout strangers. The spot which 



Togrul Beg, the grandson of Seljuk, a Turkoman cliieftain, whence 
the name Seljukian, A. D. 1076. 



32 THE FIRST CRUSADE, 

tradition had assigned to the Holy Sepulchre, together 
with the Church of the Resurrection originally built by 
Constantino the Great,* were left in possession of the 
Christians ; and, satisfied with the exaction of a small 
tribute from every inhabitant and pilgrim, the Saracen 
governors even encouraged the periodical increase of 
population which swelled their revenues. The reign 
of Haroun Al Raschid was especially marked as a pe- 
riod of undisturbed communication between the Latin 
world and Jerusalem; and the transmission of the 
keys of the city to Charlemagne by that Khalif, though 
assuredly not designed as a surrender of its sovereign- 
ty, was an elegant expression of esteem for the empe- 
ror of the "Western Christians, and a pledge of secure 
access for his subjects. f 

When, in the tenth century, Jerusalem fell under 
the dominion of the Fatimite Khalifs of Egypt, the 
resort of pilgrims to Jerusalem was equally protected 
by the first two princes of that dynasty, who were not 
insensible to the benefits of the commercial intercourse 
of the same fleets which conveyed these devout pas- 
sengers. But when the frenzy of Hakem, the third 
Fatimite Khalif, instigated him to destroy, or, at 
least, greatly to injure, the Church of the Resurrection 
and the Rock of the Sepulchre, the horrors of a perse- 



* Eusebius, in Vita Constantin. lib. iii. c. 25. 
I Eginharti Vita CaroJi Mayni, p. 80, 81. Willermus Tyrensis 
Archiepiscopus, (^Gesta Dei per Francos,") p. 630. 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 66 

cution which he at the same time inflicted on the 
Christians of Jerusalem, interrupted the devotional 
visits of their Western brethren ; and the report of his 
sacrilegious tyranny first excited that indignation of 
the Latin world at the possession and profanation of 
the Holy Sepulchre by infidels, which afterward burst 
into action with an energy so tremendous. Before 
the institutions of chivalry were sufficiently matured 
to feed this kindling spirit, the death of Hakem, and 
the return of his successors to a more tolerant policy, 
again opened the shores of Palestine to the devotion 
of Europe ; the Church of the Resurrection rose from 
its ruins ; the Holy Sepulchre was repaired ; and the 
custom of pilgrimage, stimulated by its temporary 
repression, was renewed with tenfold ardour. An im- 
mense tide of population flowed from every Western 
country toward Jerusalem; and, in the language of a 
contemporary chronicler, the innumerable multitude of 
pilgrims comprehended the lowest and middle orders 
of the people, counts, princes, and dignified prelates, 
and even women, as well of noble as of poorer condi- 
tion.* 

During the remaining period of the Fatimite do- 
minion in Palestine, these pious visitants continued to 
experience from the Mussulman tyrants of the land, in 
the alternations of policy and caprice, just sufficient 
protection to encourage their concourse, with abundant 



* Glaber, lib. iv. in Recueil des Hist. Frangais, vol. x. p. 50. 

3 



64: THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

injuries to exasperate that desire of vengeance which 
they communicated to the whole Western world. Pre- 
cisely when this feeling, nourished by the general dis- 
positions in the social state of Europe to which we 
have referred, had acquired full strength, it was forced 
into impetuous action by one of those sudden and vio- 
lent vicissitudes of revolution, to which Asia, in every 
age of her history, has been subject. In their rapid 
career of conquest, the Seljukian Turks, in an uncer- 
tain year toward the close of the eleventh century, 
became the masters of Palestine.''' Those recent and 
fierce converts to Islamism, appearing as the cham- 
pions of the Abassidan Khalifs of Bagdad, w^re ani- 
mated with equal hatred against the Fatimite posses- 
sors and the Christian tributaries of Palestine; and 
their entrance into Jerusalem was marked by an in- 
discriminate massacre. The fanatical cruelty of a race 
of barbarians, with the sanguinary precepts of the 
Koran freshly engrafted on their native ferocity, was 
untempered, like that of the more civilized Saracens, 
by any motives of toleration ; the Christian clergy in 
Jerusalem were frequently tortured and imj)risoned in 
mere wanton fury, or for the sake of the ransom which 
their sufferings wrung from their brethren ; and the 
Latin pilgrims, who, in defiance of danger, were still 
urged by pious impulses to visit the Holy Land, were 
exposed in their journey through it, and in their de- 

* Willermus Tyr. p. G33. 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. oO 

votions at the Sepulchre, to every variety of insult 
and spoliation from the savage and greedy Turks. 
The reports which they circulated on their return, 
both of the afflictions of the church of Jerusalem and 
of their own endured wrongs, agitated all Christendom 
with an universal sentiment of mingled horror, shame, 
and vengeance, at the profanation of the holy places 
of Jerusalem, the imaginary disgrace of suffering the 
scenes of human redemption to remain in the hands 
of sacrilegious infidels, and the conviction that the 
punishment of their impious atrocities was a duty 
enjoined equally by religion and by honour."^' 

While these feelings were shared with deep sin- 
cerity alike by the great body of the clergy and laity 
of Western Europe, events had arisen in the state of 
the Byzantine empire, which gave the papal see an 
immediate motive of political interest in directing the 
strong impulse of the age to a religious war. When 
the victorious career of the Seljukian Turks, under Alp 
Arslan,-|- began to threaten the safety of Constantino- 
ple itself, the Emperor Michael VIL, in the extremity 
of his distress and terror, grasped at a faint hope of 
succour by addressing himself to the ruler of the 
Latin church. Through a mission to Pope Gregory 



* Willermus Tyr. p. 634. 

t Alp Arslan, "the valiant lion/' was the nephew and successor 
of Togrul Beg, as chief of the Seljukian Turks. He defeated the 
Greek Emperor, Diogenes Romanus, in 1071, and was slain by an 
assassin in 1072. 



36 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 




GTegory VII. 



VIL, he exposed the common danger of Christendom 
from the new growth of the Mohammedan power, 
declared his reverence for the papal authority, and 
imj)lored its exercise for his aid among the princes of 
the West. Such an application, which seemed to 
promise the submission of the Greek church to the 
papacy, opened views of aggrandizement, too congenial 
to the towering ambition and adventurous spirit of 
Gregory to be received with indifference; and he 
strenuously exhorted the sovereigns of Europe, by 
encyclical epistles, to arm against the infidels. In 
these letters the principal recommendation was the 
union of the two churches of Christendom for a gene- 
ral armament against the Turks ; but in a single pas- 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 37 

sage announcing that fifty thousand warriors had 
already declared their willingness to be led to the 
redemption of the Holy Sepulchre, is first* plainly 
shadowed out the great subsequent design of the Cru- 
sades.f 

The proposal of Gregory VII. was not yet, however, 
directed with sufficient singleness of purpose to the 
shores of Palestine to inflame the kindling enthusiasm 
of the West ; and the opportunity of maturing his dar- 
ing project was reserved for his successor and imitator, 
Urban II. A renewal of the supplication which had 
been addressed to Gregory was produced by the increas- 
ing distress of the Eastern empire ; and the subsequent 
connection of its affairs with the first crusade requires 
that we should here briefly trace the thread of the 
Byzantine annals from the accession of Alexius Comne- 
nus. That prince, at the outset of his reign, found his 
dominions assailed simultaneously on opposite extremi- 
ties by the arms of the Normans of Italy and the Sel- 
jukian Turks. The invasion of Greece by Robert 
Guiscard, the first Norman Duke of Calabria, with the 
magnificent design of conquering the Eastern empire, 
demanded the earliest care of Alexius ; and, though 

* It is usual to infer that the first design of a crusade was con- 
tained in an encyclical letter of Pope Sylvester II. at the com- 
mencement of the eleventh century. But the object of his epistle 
(Recueil des Hist. Fran^ais, vol. x. p. 425) does not appear to have 
gone beyond the obtaining of some pecuniary succour from Christen- 
dom for the distressed church of Jerusalem. 

f Bpistolae Greg. VII. lib. i. ii. &c. (in Labbe, Concilia, vol. x.) 



38 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 







Robert Giiiscard ordering his shiiix l'> he burned. 

his resistance was gallant and vigorous, his defeat by 
the Norman in the great battle of Durazzo, shook the 
tottering fabric of Byzantine power to its centre. In 
this war Robert Guiscard ordered his ships to be burned 
on the hostile shores of Illyria, to prevent his soldiers 
from having any hopes of retreat ; and this, too, in the 
face of an almost innumerable host of the Eastern 
empire gathered together for the defence of Durazzo. 
The distraction of an Italian war arrested Guiscard in 
the subjugation of Greece, and, perhaps, saved Constan- 
tinople from his assaults : * but his enterprise had fa- 
voured the progress of the Turks in the eastern pro- 
vinces of the empire ; and Alexius was compelled to 
purchase their forbearance by the formal cession of 



* Anna Commena, Alexias, lib. iii.-v. &c. Galfridus Malatcrra, 
Hist, (in Muratori, Scrij). Rcr. Ital. vol. v.) lib. iii. c. 2-1-39. 



CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 39 

Asia Minor. The establishment in that wealthy re- 
gion, of the subordinate Seljukian kingdom of Roum, 
or of the Romans — a title in itself insulting to the 
proud pretensions and fallen majesty of the successors 
of Constantine — contracted the eastern frontiers of 
their empire to the shores of the Bosphorus and the 
Hellespont. The residence of Solyman, the Sultan 
of Roum, was fixed at Nice in Bythynia, within a 
hundred miles of Constantinople; and the Turkish 
outposts were separated only by the strait from the 
imperial capital. A hollow pacification did not pre- 
vent Solymon from meditating the passage of that 
channel ; and his preparation of a naval armament 
filled Alexius with reasonable alarm for the safety of 
the European remnant of his dominions.''' Following 
the example of Michael VII., he addressed the most 
earnest entreaties for succour to the Pope and the 
temporal princes of Western Christendom.-j- The inde- 
pendent partitions of the Seljukian conquests on the 
death of Malek Shah, and the decline of the Turkish 
power through intestine dissensions, relieved the 
pressure on the Byzantine empire ; and Alexius was 
enabled" even to recover some portion of Asia Minor 
from the successor of Solyman ; but his envoys were 



* For tlie history of the Turkish conquest of Asia Minor, &c., vide 
De Guignes, vol. i. p. 244, vol. ii. p. 1-12. Also the original ac- 
count of William of Tyre, lib. i. c. 9, 10. 

f Guibert Abbat. Hist. Hicrosol. p. 475, 476. (Gesta Dei per 
Francos.) 



40 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 



yet resident at the Papal Court, when, by an instru- 
ment apparently far more powerless, that spark was 
struck into the enthusiasm of Europe which threw its 
combustible elements into one jxeneral conflagration of 



religious warfare. 



r:;.0^ 




■Sr-jU" 



PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 41 




Peter the Hermit. 



SECTIOIT n. 



PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

^^II^^M HE name and story of the ex- 
'^ traordinary individual who lit 
up this unquenchable flame 
' of fanaticism, must be fa- 
miliar to every reader. Peter 
the Hermit was a poor gentle- 
; man of Picardy, who, after 
following in arms his feudal 
lord, Eustace de Bouillon, and 
vainly attempting to improve 
his fortunes by an alliance 
with a lady of noble family, 
had, in some moment either 




42 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 







Pcicr the Hermit and the Patriarch of Jerusalem. 

of disappointed ambition or of awakened remorse 
for deeper guilt, escaped, from a profitless service 
and a distasteful marriage, to the refuge of the cloister. 
But the resistless fervour of spirit, which afterward 
produced effects so memorable, led him shortly to de- 
sert the monastic profession for a life of absolute soli- 
tude ; and to the character of an anchorite he next 
superadded that of a pilgrim to the Holy Land. The 
scenes which he witnessed, the sufferings which he 
endured, in this expedition, were of a nature to con- 
firm the mental distemper which had been nourished 
in his cell. At Jerusalem his indignation w^as ex- 
cited by the cruelties of the Turks to the Christian 
residents and pilgrims : his piety was shocked at the 
profanations with which the Holy Sepulchre was in- 



PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 4o 

suited by those barbarian infidels. He fancied him- 
self inspired by Heaven to eftect its deliverance from 
their hands ; and, in a conversation with the Patriarch 
of Jerusalem, he declared his purpose to rouse the 
princes and people of the West to avenge the disgrace 
of Christendom/'' He possessed many qualities which, 
notwithstanding an unpromising exterior, peculiarly 
fitted him for the task to which he thoroughly devoted 
himself. He was inspired with the genuine spirit of 
enthusiasm : regardless of bodily privation and fa- 
tigue, steadfast in purpose, ardent in imagination, and, 
above all, animated by that admixture of pious inten- 
tions with personal vanity, which has deluded the 
fanatic of every age. When he first emerged from 
obscurity, and burst upon the world as the preacher 
of a religious war, he is described as emaciated by 
self-inflicted austerities and wayfaring toil; diminu- 
tive in stature ; mean in appearance ; and clad in 
those coarse weeds of a solitary, from whence he 
derived his surname of the Hermit. But his eye 
beamed with fire and intelligence ; he was fluent in 
speech; and the vehement sincerity of his feelings 
supplied him with the only eloquence which would 
have been intelligible to the popular passions of his 
times.-]- 

* Willermus Tyr. lib. i. c. 11. Guibert Abbat. p. 482. 

f Willermus Tyr. p. 637. The archbishop's lively portraiture 
of the fanatic has often been quoted : — Erat autem hie idem staturd 
])usillus, et quantum ad exteriorem hom!neni,personae coniemjitabilis. 



44 THE FIRST CKUSADE. 

Having obtained from the Patriarch of Jerusalem 
letters of credence and supplication for the cause 
which he had undertaken, Peter, on his return to 
Europe, repaired at once to the Papal Court, and 
found in Urban II. an astonished but ready listener 
to his magnanimous project. The pope recognised, 
and, perhaps, sincerely credited, the Divine authority 
of his misabn ; but the views of Gregory VII. were 
not forgotten by his successor ; and motives of ambi- 
tion, sufficiently strong to induce his assent, must have 
been suggested by the embassy of Alexius, and the 
desire of extending the authority of the Papal See 
over the churches of the East. The probability that 
schemes of mere worldly policy were at least mingled 
with the religious impressions of Urban II. is increased 
by the assertion of a well-informed writer of his times,'^' 
that he had recourse to a temperate counsellor, who 
had in his own person proved the weakness of the 
Byzantine empire. This was Boemond, natural son of 
Robert Guiscard, who had attended his father in his 
daring invasion of Greece, and whose ambitious spirit 
was now impatiently restrained within the narrow 
limits of a Neapolitan fief The Norman prince, 

Srd major in exicjuo rcfjnahat corjwre virtus. Vivaci's enim ingenii 
craty ct oculum hahens j^ei-sjnroccm ; yratumque, ct qM7ite jJucns ei 
non deerat cloqnium. (This man was little in stature and contempt- 
ible in appearance ; but there reigned within that slight body a very 
courageous spirit. He possessed a lively genius, and had a quick, 
clear eye ; nor was he wanting in agreeable and ready eloquence.) 
* Malmsbury, p. 407 




yy :^,y.^yyy,y^/; ,^_i5. - 



V*. 



PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 45 

whose selfish and wily character strikingly developed 
itself in the subsequent events of the Crusade, was 
little influenced by the devotional fervour of the age ; 
and, if his advice determined Urban to direct the 
enthusiasm of Europe to the shores of Palestine, we 
may readily believe the chronicler that it was founded 
more upon political than religious considerations.* 

However this may have been, the Hermit of Picardy 
quitted the Papal Court strengthened by the approba- 
tion and the promises of the spiritual chief of Christen- 
dom ; and, travelling over Italy and France, he every- 
where proclaimed the sacred duty of delivering the 
sepulchre of Christ from the hands of the infidels. 
Unless we bear in mind the prodigious influence of 
those superstitious and martial feelings which together 
absorbed the passions of a fierce and ignorant age, it 
is difficult to conceive the recorded effects of the Her- 
mit's preaching ; and language has been exhausted in 
describing, after contemporary authorities, the innu- 
merable crowds of all ranks which thronged cities and 
hamlets, churches and highways, at his voice ; the 
tears, the sighs, the indignation excited in these mul- 
titudes by his picture of the wrongs of their Christian 
brethren, and the sacrilegious defilement of the Holy 
Sepulchre ; the shame and remorse which followed his 
reproaches at the guilty supineness that had aban- 



* Pandul. Pisanus, Vita Urhanii II. (in Script. Rerum Ital. vol. 
iii.) p. 352. Willermus Tyr. p. 638. Malmsbury, uhi supra. 



46 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

doned the blessed scenes of redemption to the insults 
of infidels; the eager reception of his injunctions to 
every sinner to seek reconcilement with Heaven by 
devotion to its cause ; and the rapture which his de- 
nunciations of vengeance against the Saracen enemies 
of God awakened in the stern hearts of congregated 
warriors. The fanatical austerity of the preacher, 
which was proclaimed in his withered form, his squalid 
attire, and his abstemious diet ; the voluntary poverty 
which distributed to the indigent the arms vainly de- 
signed for its own relief; the rude eloquence of speech 
and gesture, which flowed from impassioned sincerity, 
were all in deep unison with the religious sentiments 
of his hearers : the appeal to arms roused, with irre- 
sistible strength, that double excitement of devotion 
and valour which animated, as with a blended and in- 
separable principle, the Christian chivahy of Europe.* 
The pope had dismissed the Hermit with the as- 
surance that he would strenuously support his great 
design ; and the enthusiasm which Peter had awakened 
by his preaching was restrained from bursting into 
action, only by eager expectation of the fulfilment of 
the pledge. At Piacenza, Urban first convoked the 
prelates of Italy and the neighbouring regions ; four 
thousand inferior clergy, and thirty thousand lay per- 
sons, are computed to have flocked to the scene; 



* Willermus Tyr. p. 638. Guibert, p. 482. Fulcherius Carno- 
tensis, (^Gcsta Dei per Francos,') p. 381. 



PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 47 

[a. d. 1095, March;] and, the legates of the Eastern 
Emperor having been admitted into the assembly to 
expose the dangers which menaced their country and 
all Christendom from the progress of the Turks, and 
to implore the aid of the nations of the West against 
the infidels, it was resolved to promote the demand, 
and to mature the design of a holy war, by the au- 
thority of a more general Council.'^ Urban was di- 
rected, in his choice of a place for its assemblage, by the 
partialities of birth, by the predominant martial and 
religious spirit of his native country, France, and by 
the special invitation of Raymond, Count of Thoulouse. 
Clermont, the capital of Auvergne, was appointed for 
the seat of the Council, at which the pope in person 
presided, and an immense multitude of clergy and laity 
of all ranks, from France, Italy, and Germany, gave 
their .attendance. [Nov. 1095.] During the first week 
after the opening of the Council, its deliberations were 
chiefly engaged in the enactment of some general pro- 
visions for the improvement of morals and the repres- 
sion of private war ; but, on the ninth morrow of the 
session, the pope himself ascended an elevated pulpit 
in the open air, and preached the sacred duty of re- 
deeming the sepulchre of Christ from the infidels, and 
the certain propitiation for sin by devotion to this 
meritorious service. His fervent exhortations were 
addressed to a multitude already deeply imbued with 



t P. Pisan. Vila Urban, p. 353. Labbe, Concilia, vol. x. p. 499, &c 



48 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

fanatical purpose ; his inference of a divine command 
for the holy war was interrupted by one universal and 
tumultuous cry of '- It is the will of God ;" and the 
slightly varied acclamations of Deus vuJt, Dieux el volt, 
and Deus lo volt, expressed the common enthusiasm 
of the clergy and the people, while it marks the pure 
retention of the Latin tongue in the familiar speech of 
ecclesiastics, and the popular corruptions which it had 
undergone into the two great northern and provengal 
dialects of France. At the instant when their cries 
resounded throughout the vast assembly, the figura- 
tive injunction of Scripture to the sinner, to take up 
the cross of Christ, suggested to Urban the idea that 
all who embraced the sacred enterprise should bear 
on their shoulder or breast that symbol of salvation. 
The proposal was eagerly adopted ; the Bishop of Puy 
first solicited the pope to affix the holy sign in red 
cloth^' on his shoulder ; and the example being imme- 
diately followed, the cross became the invariable badge 
of the profession, while it gave an enduring title to 
the warfare of the Croisse or Crusader. The first 
temporal prince who assumed the cross was the Count 
of Thoulouse; and his offers, through his ambassa- 

* It has been observed by Gibbon, after Du Cange, that although 
in the first Crusade red was the general colour of the cross, different 
hues were subsequently adopted as national distinctions : red by the 
French, green by the Flemings, and u-hite by the English. Yet the 
red cross of St. George was early our national emblem, and still 
proudly floats on that banner which ''a thousand years has braved 
the battle and the breeze." 



PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 49 

dors, to devote his powerful resources, as well as his 
person, to the cause, were hailed with admiration. 
Before the Council broke up, Adhemar, the Bishop of 
Puy, was invested by Urban with full authority as 
papal legate for the conduct of the expedition ; and 
the following spring was appointed for the period of 
its departure to the East.''-' 

The decision of the Council of Clermont was wel- 
comed throughout the Latin world with joyful assent ; 
and Europe echoed with the clang of warlike prepara- 
tion for the sacred enterprise. France, Italy, and 
Germany were inspired with a common ardour ; the 
same spirit was communicated to the British Islands, 
and penetrated the remoter region of Scandinavia ;f 
and, if Spain did not equally respond to the call, it 
was only because the Christian chivalry of Castile and 
Arragon were already occupied on a nearer theatre of 
religious hostility, in the long contest with their Sara- 



* Willcrmus Tyr. p. 639-641. Guibert, p. 478^80. Fuleher. 
p. 382. Baldricus Arch, (also in Gcsta Dei,) p. 79-88. Labbe, 
Concilia, vol. x. 

•|" Malinsbury wbimsically involves bis picture of the universal ex- 
tent of the crusading ardour, in an allusion to national habits : " The 
Welshman forsook his hunting; the Scot his companionship with 
vermin ; the Dane his carouse ; and the Norwegian his raw fish," 
p. 416. Among the distinguished personages who joined the first 
Crusade from our own island, were Stephen, the English Norman 
Earl of Albemarle, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, (Dug- 
dale, Baronage, vol. i. p. 23, 61,) and perhaps {11 Art de Verifier 
les Dates, vol. i. p. 842) a son- of Malcolm Ceanmore, King of Scot- 
land. 

4 



50 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

cen enemies.''' In every country, and among all ranks 
and conditions of men, the master passions of fanatical 
and martial zeal were fed by various impulses of ac- 
tion. The chief inducement, beyond doubt, was a 
canon of the Council of Clermont, by which the per- 
formance of the crusading vow was accepted as a full 
equivalent for all ecclesiastical penances. This decree 
is memorable in itself as having first suggested, or at 
least rapidly extended, the idea of granting plenary 
indulgences : the sale of which for money was after- 
ward converted, by the cupidity of the popes, into so 
profitable an expedient for replenishing their cofiers, 
and became the most scandalous practical corruption 
of the Romish Church.f 

To the feudal nobility and their followers, the com- 
mutation of penances for a military enterprise was 
peculiarly grateful. The anathemas of the church 



* The sacred and meritorious character of the warftare against the 
Spanish Saracens had been already recognised by the popes. In the 
conquest of Toledo, (a. d. 1085,) Alfonzo VI. had been assisted by 
many foreign knights ; and, when pressed in the following year by 
the African Saracens, he was succoured by the chivalry of France. 
It has even been contended (Mailly, Esprit des Croisades, vol. ii. 
p. 91) that their auxiliary expedition should be numbered as the 
first of the Crusades ; and there is no doubt that is was considered as 
a holy war, and must have familiarized the French nobles with the 
idea of such enterprises — though its memory has been eclipsed by 
the superior importance of the subsequent design for the redemption 
of the Sepulchre. 

f hahhe, Concilia, \o\. x. p. 507. Moshcim, Ecclcs. Hist. Cent, xii 
P. 2. c. 3. Muratori, Aiitiq. Med. JEvi. Diss. Ixviii. 



PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 51 

against private wars, the enforcement of the truce of 
God, and the prohibition to bear arms, or to mount on 
horseback, which the clergy often employed as a form 
of penance, were all grievous to an order in whom 
the love of arms and rapine struggled with the terrors 
of superstition. An injunction to religious warfare, 
which relieved their fears, while it promised free in- 
dulgence to their favourite pursuits, was gladly em- 
braced as the very easiest mode of reconciling their 
usual course of life with expiation for its disorders ; 
and so admirable, in the judgment of the age, ap- 
peared this discovery of a mode of atoning for its 
prevalent crimes by their very repetition, that a chro- 
nicler emphatically eulogizes it as a new kind of salva- 
tion.* Nor were there wanting the worldly incentives 
of avarice, ambition, and renown, still further to ani- 
mate the mistaken sense of religious duty. The 
exaggerated tales of pilgrims and traders were filled 
with pictures of oriental wealth ; the subjugation of 
Asia seemed an easy and glorious achievemnt ; and 
the chivalry of Europe already shared in imagination 
the countless treasures and fertile provinces of the 
gorgeous East.f 

By the remaining classes of society, the same min- 
gled influence of spiritual and temporal motives was 
equally felt. While numbers of the clergy sincerely 

* '■^ Novum salutis genus y Guibert, p. 471; (a new kind of sal- 
vation.) 

f Idem, p. 554, 555. 



62 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

shared the general fanaticism, the conquest of Asia 
opened prospects of wealthy estabhshments to the 
higher order of ecclesiastics ; the monks found at least 
a meritorious occasion of escape from the irksome 
restraint of the cloister, and the peasantry from feudal 
bondage to the soil. Under the pretence of a holy 
purpose which it was decreed sinful to prevent, debt- 
ors were protected both from the present demands of 
their creditors and the accumulation of interest during 
their absence ; criminals were permitted to elude the 
pursuit of justice ; and offenders of every degree, 
under the special safeguard which the church threw 
over the performance of their vows, were enabled to 
defy the vengeance of the secular law.'-' Lastly, even 
the speculations of an infant commerce assisted the 
general excitement; and the merchants of Italy, in 
particular, engaged with avidity in enterprises from 
which, in effect, they alone, by the estabUshment and 
extension of a lucrative maritime trade, derived any 
solid and durable advantage. 

Yet all these were but the secondary motives of 
that one mighty impulse, under which all the ordi- 
nary considerations of life, all the tics which bind 
men to home and country, to kindred and possessions, 
were alike disregarded. To ol^tain funds for so dis- 
tant and expensive an enterprise, princes and high 
nobles mortgaged, or even alienated their vast do- 

* Sec Du Cange, in v. Crucis Pri'vilegiitm, and the authorities 
there cited. 



PREACHING OF THE FIEST CRUSADE. 53 

mains ; warriors of inferior rank either wholly aban- 
doned their feudal estates and obligations, or pre- 
pared to follow their lords in voluntary service ; lands 
were everywhere converted into money ; horses, arms, 
and means of transport were collected at exorbitant 
prices ; and valuable property of all kinds was reck- 
lessly sacrificed on the most inadequate terms to 
colder or craftier dealers. Yet, even among such, the 
irresistible force of example often prevailed ; the 
awakening conviction of duty, the thirst of glory, or 
the dread of reproach, was gradually imparted to 
every bosom not wholly insensible to religion and 
honour; and the prudent or designing purchaser in 
one hour, was himself the deluded seller in the next. 
Nor was the contagion of fanatical adventure confined 
to the chivalric order. Not only ecclesiastics deserted 
their benefices, and monastic recluses their cells, but 
mechanics and rustics forsook their occupations, and 
exchanged their implements of industry for weapons 
of offence ; and women of all ranks, with an aban- 
donment of the more timid and becoming virtues of 
their sex, which produced equal misery and scandal, 
either left their husbands behind them, or, with their 
children, swelled and encumbered the unwieldy masses 
of helpless pilgrims.* Moreover, the superstitious 

* Guibert, p. 481. Albertus Aquensis, (^Gesfa Dei 2^er Francos,) 
p. 185. Guibert has a passage wliich too curiously illustrates the 
madness of the prevalent fanaticism to be passed without notice in 
this place. Deluded rustics yoked their oxen, shod like horses, to 



54 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

confidence of atonement for past crimes, and the ex- 
pectation of license for future enormities, equally 
attracted the vilest portion of mankind. Robbers, 
murderers, and other criminals of the deepest dye, 
professed their design to wash out their guilt in the 
blood of the enemies of God.'-' The aggregate of the 
immense multitudes who thus assumed the cross could 
scarcely be accurately computed, in an age so unfa- 
vourable for collecting the details of statistical calcu- 
lation. By one chronicler it is vaguely estimated at 
six millions of persons ; f hy a less credulous contem- 
porary it is denied that all the kingdoms of the West 
could supply so vast a host ; J but even the exaggera- 
tion proves that the original design of enthusiasm 
would have totally depopulated Europe; and, after 
making every deduction for the influence of delay, 
returning reason, and the accidents of life, in cooling 
the first burst of fanatical fervour, the numbers which 
actually fulfilled their purpose justify the assertion 
that whole nations rather than the mere armies of 
"Western Christendom, were precipitated upon Moham- 
medan Asia. 

carts, in which they placed their families and goods to perform the 
sacred journey ; and it vfusjilanh joco aptisslmum (very amusing) to 
hear the children inquiring, as they approached any city, whether 
that were Jerusalem, p. 482. 

* Wilermus Tyr. p. 6-11. Albertus Aquensis, uhi mjjrdi. 

f Fulcherius Carnot. p. 386. 

X Guibert, p. 556. 



CRUSADES BY THE PEOPLE. 



55 




Norman Armour, 

SECTIOIS' m 

PETER THE HERMIT— THE CRUSADES UNDERTAKEN 
BY THE PEOPLE. 



ONG before the season, the 
end of spring,''' fixed by 
the Pope 'for the depart- 
ure of the Crusaders had expired, 
the impatience of the ruder mul- 
titudes of people grew too vio- 
lent for restraint, [a. d. 1096, 
■ March.] Soon after the com- 
mencement of the new year, an immense concourse of 
pilgrims, chiefly of the lowest orders, had thronged 




* And not the " Feast of the Assumption in August," as Gibbon 
has stated. See the interesting version of the speech of Urban, in 
the Council of Clermont, as given by William of Malmsbury. 
The first detachment under Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, set out by 
way of Hungary in March, 1096. 



56 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

around Peter the Hermit on the western frontiers of 
France, and urged him, as the original preacher of 
the sacred enterprise, to assume its conduct. Ap- 
parently unconscious of his utter unfitness for com- 
mand, the fanatic rashly accepted the perilous 
charge; and, under his guidance, the accumulating 
torrent began to sweep over Germany.* Its immense 
tide overflowed the ordinary channels of communi- 

* Before ^ve accompany the. disorderly march of thq mob ■which 
thus commenced the First Crusade, it behooves us to specify our 
principal guides throughout the expedition. These are the original 
authorities contained in the great collection of Bongarsius, which he 
printed at Hanover, in two folio volumes, in 1611, under the general 
title of Gesta Dei i^r Francos; a designation which Jortin pithily 
proposed to change into Gcsta Diaboli, &c. The actual eye-witnesses 
of the First Crusade, whose relations are to be found in the collection 
of Bongarsius, were, 1. Bobcrt the Monk, (^Jlist. IHcrosoli/mitana;') 
2. Raymond de Agiles, chaplain to the Count of Thoulouse, during 
the Crusade, (^Ilht. Francorum ;) and 3. Fulcher, also a chaplain, 
who accompanied the Count of Chartrcs, and afterward attached him- 
self to Baldwin, brother of the great Godfrey, and second king of 
Jernsalcm, (^Gesta Fcrer/rmaniium Francorum) ; 4. next in the order 
of testimony is the work of an archbishop. Baldric, (^Ilist. Hieroso- 
Ij/m.,) who assisted at the Council of Clermont, and whose relation, 
although he did not himself accompany the expedition, is declared to 
have been revised by an abbot who did so; 5. Albert of Aix, (^Ilist. 
Ilierosol. Expedidonis ;) and 6. Guibert, (the title of whose Chronicle, 
Gesla Dei per Francos, it was that Bongarsius adopted for the whole 
collection,) were contemporaries, and the latter was a keen observer 
and lively nan-ator; 7. and lastly, William, Archbishop of TjTe, 
already so often (juoted, whose history, although he was not contem- 
porary with the First Crusade, is, perhaps from the materials of in- 
formation to which he had access, and tlie judgment with which lie 
compiled them, the most valuable document in the whole collec- 
tion. 



CRUSADES BY THE PEOPLE. 57 

cation; and devastation marked its course. The 
roads were obstructed by the multitude of passengers ; 
the country through which they moved was oppressed 
by their excesses; the means of subsistence were ex- 
hausted by their wants; and Peter was compelled to 
exhort them to separate into smaller masses. Under 
the command of Gualtier, or Walter, a Burgundian 
knight, whose poverty procured for him the surname 
of Sans-Avoir, or the Pennyless, and who accepted the 
office of lieutenant to the Hermit, a body of twenty 
thousand pilgrims preceded the march of the main 
host through Hungary and Bulgaria toward Con- 
stantinople. The wretched quality of the adven- 
turers who composed this advanced guard is suf- 
ficiently indicated by the fact that there were only 
eight horsemen in the whole number, and their con- 
duct was as reckless as their condition was deplorable. 
Through Hungary, they were indebted for a safe 
though toilsome passage, to the friendly disposition of 
its king, Carloman, and Christian people ; but, on their 
entrance into the still wilder regions of Bulgaria, 
which were governed by a lieutenant of the Byzantine 
empire, they encountered every possible obstacle, both 
from the treacherous policy of the imperial officers, 
who forbade the supply of their necessities, and from 
the ferocious temper of the natives. Hunger com- 
pelled the crusaders to resort to violence; the Bul- 
garians flew to arms, and the route of Walter and his 
followers was tracked in blood and flames. But in 



58 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

every day's inarch, the natives cut off hundreds of the 
miserable rabble; and the destruction of the whole 
host, before it reached the southern confines of Bul- 
garia, was so complete, that only Walter and a few 
survivors succeeded, b}'^ a flight through the forests, in 
reaching the Court of Constantinople. '"^ 

The second division of the crusading mob, under 
Peter the Hermit himself, amounting to forty thou- 
sand men, women, and children, followed on the 
traces of the first body. Aided by the good offices of 
the Hungarian king, their march through his country 
was abundantly supplied, and tranquilly pursued, 
until they reached Malleville, the modern Zemlin, on 
its southern confines, where the triumphant exhibi- 
tion on the walls of the spoils of some of their precur- 
sors who had been slain in an affray with the inhabit- 
ants, roused them to a furious vengeance. The ram- 
parts of the city were scaled; thousands of its people 
were slaughtered, and for several days the survivors 
were exposed to all the horrors of violation and 
rapine. The approach of Carloman with a large 
army to punish their perfidious ingratitude, accele- 
rated the departure of the crusaders ; and their hasty 
and disorderly passage of the Save exposed them to a 
heavy loss from the attacks of the savage hordes, who 
awaited their landin": on the Bulgarian bank of that 



* Fulchcr, p. 384. Albert. Aquensis, p. 185. Guibert, p. 483. 
Willermus Tyr. p. G42. 



CRUSADES BY THE PEOPLE. 59 

river. Though they finally repelled these new ene- 
mies, they found Bulgaria a wasted solitude. The 
natives had retreated to their fastnesses and strong- 
holds ; the fortified towns were closed against them ; 
and the purchase of provisions for their march, under 
the walls of these places, was the only intercourse 
which the imperial officers would permit the inhabit- 
ants to hold with them. Their excesses again pro- 
voked a more open and fatal hostility. Enraged at 
some outrages, the people of Nissa pursued and mas- 
sacred their rear-guard ; the efforts of Peter could not 
dissuade the whole host from returning to avenge this 
quarrel ; and, in an ineffectual attempt to renew the 
same scenes as at Zemlin, the assailants were repulsed 
from the walls with immense slaughter. The triumph- 
ant garrison and inhabitants issued forth upon them ; 
a general and total rout ensued ; and, in the onset, the 
sally, and the pursuit, above ten thousand of the cru- 
saders perished. Their camp was abandoned and plun- 
dered ; and despoiled of their baggage, of their money, 
and of their arms, the wretched herd of fugitives 
continued its journey toward Constantinople.* 

When they had ceased to be formidable, their 
helpless misery extorted some compassion; Alexius 
interposed his protection, and their remains at length 
reached his capital, where they were reunited to Wal- 

* Albert. Aquensis, p. 186-188. Guibert, p. 484. Willermus 
Tyr. p. 643-645. Peter and his horde of banditti reached the neigh- 
bourhood of Constantinople in August, 1096. 



60 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

ter and the survivors of the first division. But they 
were no sooner refreshed, than they repaid their hos- 
pitable benefactor by new acts of insolence, licentious- 
ness, and pillage ; and Alexius gladly acceded to their 
desire to be transported across the Bosphorus. Under 
the conduct of Peter and his lieutenant Walter, they 
were landed in Asia Minor; but here, neither the 
exhortations of the Hermit could restrain their out- 
rages against the religion and property of the subjects 
of Alexius, nor the advice of the emperor himself to 
await the arrival of the more disciplined chivalry of 
Europe, prevent their headlong advance. Peter, find- 
ing himself totally unable to control them, used a 
decent pretext for escaping back to Constantinople; 
but Walter, whose more martial spirit was really asso- 
ciated with qualities for command deserving of a bet- 
ter fate, was compelled to yield to their clamorous 
demand to be led against the infidels. Des2:)ite of his 
prudential warnings, they divided their forces to plun- 
der the Turkish provinces, and reunited only on a 
report artfully circulated by the Sultan of Roum, that 
Nice, his capital, had fallen into the hands of an ad- 
vanced body of their associates. Allured by the pros- 
pect of sharing in its spoils, they blindly rushed into 
the heart of a hostile country ; but when they de- 
scended into the plain of Nice, instead of being wel- 
comed by the sight of the Christian banners on its 
walls, they found themselves surrounded by the Turk- 
ish cavalry. In the first onset, Walter fell bravely, 



CRUSADE BY THE PEOPLE. 61 

covered with wounds, while vainly discharging, by 
intelligence and example, the twofold duties of the 
leader and the warrior. The disorderly multitude of 
his followers was immediately overwhelmed and slaugh- 
tered ; a remnant, no more than three thousand, 
escaped the general destruction by flight to the near- 
est Byzantine fortress ; and a huge mound, into which 
the savage victors piled the bones of the slain, formed 
an ominous monument of disaster for succeeding hosts 
of crusaders.* 

The disorders and destruction of these first two 
divisions of the crusading rabble were, indeed, but a 
prelude to more atrocious scenes of guilt, and more 
enormous waste of human life. Stimulated by the 
example of Peter, a German monk, named Godeschal, 
preached the Crusade through the villages of his native 
land with so much effect, that he allured about fifteen 
thousand of the peasantry to follow him to the East. 
This third division took the same route as the two 
preceding ; but, on their arrival in Hungary, they ex- 
perienced a far different reception from its sovereign, 
who was justly exasperated at the outrages with 
which his hospitality had been repaid. At first he 
prudently supplied them with the means of accele- 
rating their passage through his kingdom ; but their 
march was attended with an aggravated repetition of 

* Albert, p. 189-193. Baldricus Arcliiepiscopus, p. 89. Gui- 
bert, p. 485. Willermus Tyr. p. 645-647. Anna Comnena, 
p. 226, 227. 



62 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

the worst crimes which had been perpetrated by the 
followers of the Hermit; the whole population of 
Hungary rose in arms against them, and Carloman 
was at length provoked to deliver them over to the 
vengeance of his subjects. For this purpose he had 
recourse to a cruel act of perfidy, which deeply sul- 
lied the merit of his earlier forbearance. Before the 
walls of Belgrade, his promise of forgiveness and pro- 
tection induced them to lay down their arms; and 
this act of submission was immediately followed by 
their ruthless massacre.* 

But the numbers, the gross superstition, the licen- 
tious wickedness, and the miserable extirpation of 
these fanatical hordes, all sink into insignificance 
before the features displayed in the composition and 
conduct of the fourth and last division of the rabble 
of Europe. From France, from the Bhenish Pro- 
vinces and Flanders, and from the British Islands, 
there gathered on the eastern confines of Germany 
one huge mass of the vile refuse of all these nations, 
amounting to no less than two hundred thousand per- 
sons. Some bands of nobles, with their mounted fol- 
lowers, were not ashamed to accompany their march, 
and share their prey ; but their leaders are undistin- 
guishable ; and the most authentic contemporary 
records of their proceedings compel us to repeat the 
incredible assertion that their motions were guided 

* Albert, p. 194. Willermus Tyr. p. 648. 



CRUSADE BY THE PEOPLE. 63 

by ca goat and a goose, which were believed to be di- 
vinely inspired. If we impatiently dismiss a circum- 
stance so revolting to every pious mind, and so de- 
grading to the pride of human intellect, we find their 
actions as detestable as their superstition was blind 
and unholy. The unhappy Jews in the episcopal 
cities of the Rhine and Moselle were the first victims 
of their ferocity. Under the protection of the eccle- 
siastical lords of these commercial places, colonies of 
that outcast race had long enjoyed toleration and 
accumulated wealth. Their riches tempted the cu- 
pidity of fanatics, who professed a zeal for the pure 
religion of the gospel, only that' they might violate its 
most sacred precepts of mercy and love. Under the 
pretence of commencing their holy war by extir- 
pating the enemies of God in Europe, they sought 
the blood and spoils of a helpless and unoffending 
people. To the honour of the Romish Church, the 
Bishops of Mayence, Spires, and other cities, courage- 
ously endeavoured to shield the Jews from their fury 
and rapine ; but their humane efforts were only par- 
tially successful, and thousands were either barbar- 
ously massacred, or, to escape the outrages and dis- 
appoint the cupidity of their enemies, cast themselves, 
their women and children, and their precious effects, 
into the waters or the flames. Sated with murder 
and spoliation, the ruffian host pursued its march from 
the Rhine to the Danube ; and the continued in- 
dulgence of its brutal sensuality attested that it 



64 THE FIKST CRUSADE. 

needed not the impulse of fanaticism for the commis- 
sion of every atrocity. But it was at length over- 
taken by the vengeance of God and man. In the 
hour of danger, the unruly and "wicked multitude 
proved as dastardly against an armed enemy as it had 
been ferocious toward the defenceless Jews. It ef- 
fected the passages of the Danube only to encounter 
a tremendous defeat from the Hungarian army which 
had collected for the national defence ; some sudden 
and inexplicable panic produced a general flight, and 
unresisted slaughter; and so dreadful was the carnage, 
that the course of the Danube was choked with the 
bodies, and its waters dyed with the blood of the 
slain. The contemporary chronicler, who was appa- 
rently best informed of their execrable crimes and 
well-merited fate, asserts that very few of the im- 
mense crusading multitude escaped death from the 
swords of the Hungarians or the rapid current of the 
river; and it is certain that, whatever remnant sur- 
vived, saved their lives only by flight and dispersion.* 

* Albert. Aquensis, p. 195, 196. Fulcher. p. 386. Willermus 
Tyr. p. 649, 650. 



CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 




SECTION IV. 

THE CRUSADE UNDERTAKEN BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 

Before twelve months had expired since the spirit 
of crusading was roused into action by the Council of 
Clermont, and before a single advantage had been 
gained over the infidels, the fanatical enthusiasm of 
Europe had already cost the lives, at the lowest com- 
putation, of two hundred and fifty thousand of its 
people.* But such were the stupid ignorance and 
headlong folly which misguided these wretched multi- 
tudes, and still more, so dark and grovelling was their 
superstition, so cruel and demoniacal their fanaticism, 
and so flagitious their licentiousness, that all pity for 
their fate is lost in the disgust and horror Avith which 
we recoil from the contemplation of brutality and 



* Mills, Hhtory of tlio Crusade!^, vol. i. p. 81. 



66 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

guilt. The picture is relieved by no exhibition ol 
dignified purpose or heroic achievement ; the myriads 
■uho had perished in Ilungarj^, in Bulgaria, and in 
Asia Minor, were animated by none of the loftier sen- 
timents of the age ; they were composed chiefly of the 
coarser rabble of every country ; and in their de- 
struction we behold only the ofTscouring of the popu- 
lar ferment of Europe. But, while the first disasters 
of. the Crusade were sweeping this mass of corruption 
from the surfiice of society, the genuine spirit of reli- 
gious and martial enthusiasm was more slowly and 
powerfully evolved. With maturer preparation, and 
with steadier resolve than the half-armed and irreiru- 
lar rabble, the mailed and organized chivalry of Eu- 
rope was arraying itself for the mighty contest ; and 
a far different, a splendid and interesting spectacle, 
opens to our view. In the characters, the motives, 
and the conduct of the princely and noble leaders 
who achieved the design of the first Crusade, we are 
no longer presented with the revolting sameness of a 
mere brutal ferocity. Their zeal, although mingled 
with superstition, and not unstained by cruelty, was 
also elevated by the generous pursuit of martial fame; 
their resolves were inspired by the twofold incentive 
of spiritual duty and temporal honour ; and their fa- 
naticism was regulated by foresight and prudence. In 
entering on their purpose, they had, indeed, been more 
or less infected with the general madness of the age ; 
but, in the guidance of the holy war, many of them 



CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 67 

proved themselves as politic in counsel, as skilful in 
expedients, and as patient and constant under difficul- 
ties, as they were adventurous in danger and courage- 
ous in combat. The wildness of their enterprise is 
condemned by our calmer reason ; the justice of their 
cause may be impeached on every true principle of 
divine and human law ; but, from the magnanimous 
devotion of their spirit, and the fearless heroism of 
their exploits, it is impossible to withhold our sym- 
pathy and admiration. 

It has been deemed worthy of remark, that none of 
the principal sovereigns of Euro^^e engaged in the first 
Crusade; but their absence was determined by the 
accidents of individual character and position. Pope 
Urban II. declined the personal command of the ex- 
pedition, on the plea of his engrossing functions in the 
general government of the church, and his duty of re- 
pressing the schism created by the Antipope Clement; 
or, perhaps, on the more reasonable excuse of his age 
and infirmities;'*' but he deputed his spiritual autho- 
rity to his legate Adhemar, the Bishop of Puy. The 
Emperor Henry IV., the personal enemy of Urban, 
and protector of the antipope, of course refused to 
recognise the authority by which the Crusade was 
preached. Philip I. of France was absorbed in sen- 
sual indulgence ; and to renew the excommunication 



* Belli Sacri Hint, (by an anonymous chronicler, in Mabillon, Mas. 
Ital vol. i.) p. 135. 



68 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 




Henry IV. 

already passed upon him was one of the acts of Urban 
at the very Council of Clermont. The crafty and 
irreligious character of William II. of England (Rufus) 
also led him rather to minister to his brother's reck- 
less enthusiasm, by purchasing the mortgage of Duke 
Robert's Normaji dominions, than to join himself in 
the holy war. But the cause rejected by these 
monarchs was eagerly embraced by the most dis- 
tinguished feudal princes of the second order : by 
Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of the Lower Lorraine or 
Brabant, with his two brothers, Eustace and Baldwin, 
and a kinsman also of the latter name ; Hugh, styled 
the Great Count of Vermandois, and Robert, Duke of 
Normandy, brothers of the French and English kings ; 
Robert, Stephen, and Raymond, Counts of Flanders, 



CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 



69 




Godfrey of Bouillon. 

Chartres, and Tlioulouse; and the Norman Boemond, 
son of the Guiscard, Prince of Tarento, with his 
cousin Tancred, whom history and romance have 
equally delighted to exhibit as the brightest examplar 
of knightly virtue. 

In dignity and character, however, in the conduct 
and the results of the Crusade, the highest place of 
honour must be conceded to the Duke of Brabant. 
Godfrey of Bouillon was descended through females 
from Charlemagne; and ranked, alike by his great 
possessions and personal qualities, among the most 
powerful feudatories of the German Empire. His 
reputation for wisdom in counsel and prowess in arms 
was deservedly high; and, during the war between 
the empire and papacy, in which he adhered to Henry 
IV., he had specially distinguished himself, both at 



70 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

the battle of Merseburg and at the siege of Rome. 
His political importance was increased by the position 
of his states on the frontiers of France and Germany ; 
and his consequent familiarity with the popular 
dialects of both countries, as well as his acquisition 
of the Latin, the customary language of the church, 
facilitated his intercourse, and promoted his personal 
influence, among the nations of Europe. But the 
se^'ere integrity of his character disdained the selfish 
exercise of these advantages; and, amid the gross 
and violent disorders of the times, his life was regu- 
lated by the strictest principles of morality and re- 
ligion. His manners were gentle, pure, and benig- 
nant; his conduct was just and disinterested; and 
his piety, though mistaken, was sincere and fervent. 
These virtues might have qualified him rather for the 
cloister than the camp, if they had not been asso- 
ciated with energies capable of the loftiest designs : 
with a head to conceive and a hand to execute the 
most arduous enterprises which his conscience ap- 
proved; with resolution, tempered by reflection and 
judgment, which no difficulties could shake; and 
with valour, calmed only by moderation, which no 
perils could deter. Since the siege of Rome his frame 
had been consumed by a slow fever; his illness dic- 
tated the renewal of an early purjDOse of performing 
the pilgrimage to Jerusalem : and he no sooner heard 
of the projected Crusade, than, as if inspired with new 
life, he suddenly shook off' disease from his limbs, and 



CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 



71 




Siege of Rome. 

sprang with renovated health and youth from a sick- 
couch to engage in so glorious and meritorious a 
work/^ 

The transcendent merits and accomplishments 
which adorned the principal hero of the first Crusade 
have demanded an especial portraiture : the few fea- 
tures in the characters of the remaining leaders, 
which varied their general resemblance in devout zeal 
and warlike excellence, may be more briefly sketched. 
In Hugh of France these qualities, though supported 
by other attributes not unworthy of his royal birth, 
were destitute of the religious humility and modest 
demeanour of Godfrey ; and the great Count of Ver- 

'■* Malmsbury, p. 44S. Guibert, p. 485. Willermus Tyr. p. 651. 



72 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 




Robert of Normand;/ and his Father. 

mandois was remarkable chiefly for an arrogant and 
haughty deportment.f Robert of Normandy was 
generous and merciful, eloquent in debate, and well 
skilled in military expedients; but profuse in ex- 
pense, dissolute in morals, and equally rash and 
unsteady in resolve. His rashness and insubordi- 
nation had nearly made him a parricide, as he had 
unhorsed his own father, William the Conqueror, in 
battle, and had only been prevented from putting him 
to death, by his father's exclaiming and making him- 
self known. Although, therefore, his conduct during 



f Anna Comnena, p. 227. Robertus Monachus, p. 34. Guibert, 
p. 485. 



CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 73 

the Crusade was thought in some measure to atone 
for the irregularities of his earher life, and his ex- 
ploits often attracted the general admiration, his 
instability of mind prevented his maintaining the 
respect of his more illustrious compeers.* His name- 
sake of Flanders resembled him in headlong valour, 
without sharing any portion even of his abortive 
talents. The Count of Chartres, one of the wealthiest 
and most potent feudal princes of France, w\as also 
deemed the most learned in all the literate and prac- 
tical knowledge of the age, experienced and wise in 
his suggestions, clear and persuasive in discourse. 
These intellectual acquirements peculiarly fitted him 
for directing the general design of the war; and he 
was accordingly chosen to preside in the council of its 
leaders. In the field, the superiority of his tactical 
skill was equally recognised; but he was deficient in 
vigorous enterprise; and in the eyes of the fiery 
champions of the Cross, his fame was tainted by the 
questionable quality of his valour. 

The veteran and sagacious Count of Thoulouse,f 
whose youth had been habitually exercised in arms 

* A well-known instance of Robert's careless spirit was the above- 
mentioned mortgage of his duchy to his brother William for five 
years, at the inadequate price of ten thousand marks, to equip him- 
self for the Crusade. Chron. Sax. p. 204. Will. Gemeticensis, 
p. 673. 

f The history of this prince is very obscure. His original title 
was Count of St. Gilles in Languedoc ; whence Anna Comnena cor- 
rupted his name into Sangeles, and under that appellation exagge- 



74 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

against his Saracen neighbours in Spain, had brought 
from that warfare a deadly hatred of the Mussuhnan 
name, and was more fiercely animated than the other 
crusading princes by the spirit of religious intolerance. 
His master passion was umitigated fanaticism ; and 
the devotion of his old age, the abandonment of his 
extensive dominions, and the appropriation of his 
great riches to the service of the Crusade, might have 
protected his motives from the suspicion of worldly 
ambition and avarice, if their sincerity had not been 
attended by a cold and selfish nature, a proud and 
vindictive temper, which denied him the friendship of 
his noble confederates, and alienated the affections of 
his own native followers. To the purely fanatical 
zeal which predominated in the character of the Pro- 
vencal prince, may be opposed the unscrupulous am- 
bition and deep hypocrisy of the Norman Boemond, 
the Ulysses of the war. To him alone, perhaps, of 
all the movers and warriors of the Crusade, may be 
attributed a systematic design of rendering the popu- 
lar enthusiasm of Europe subservient to views of mere 
personal interest. If his versatile and unprincipled 
genius enabled him to feel or to feign'*'' some share in 

rates his rank, as if he had been the principal personage of the Cru- 
sade. In what manner he had acquired the extensive fiefs of Thou- 
louse and Provence, and arrogated the title of Duke of Narbonne, 
which he also bore, seems undetermined. L^ Art do Yirijicr ks 
Dates, vol. ii. p. 280-294, &c. 

* Boemond pretended to receive with surprise and admiration the 
news of the design of Urban, which it is more than probable that he 



CRUSADES BY KINGS AND TEOPLE. 7o 

the prevalent sentiment of his time, the whole re- 
corded tenor of his conduct betrays the settled and 
absorbing pursuit of temporal aggrandizement. Fa- 
miliar with all the arts of dissimulation, and no less 
rapacious than perfidious, he exhibits, among the 
heroes of the holy war, the singular spectacle of a 
cool and crafty politician. His vices were odiously 
contrasted with the generous qualities of his youthful 
cousin Tancred," whose frank and courteous bearing, 
no less than his love of glory and high-minded disdain 
of wTong and perfidy, rendered him the mirror of 
European chivalry .f 



had secretly prompted. At the siege of Amalfi, he embraced the 
Crusade in an apparent transport of zeal : excited the fanatical 
ardour of his confederates and followers by an eloquent harangue; 
and, while their enthusiasm was at its height, rent his own robe into 
pieces in the shape of crosses for the soldiery. This curious and 
characteristic anecdote is told by Guibert, p. 485. 

* Tancrcd was the son of Matilda, sister of Kobert the Gruiscard, 
and therefore the cousin of Boemond, (Radulphus Cadomensis, de 
Gestis Tancredi, c. 1,) and not either his brother or nephew, as some 
of the writers in the Gesta Dei, less correctly informed than the 
biographer of the hero, and Gibbon and Muratori after them sup- 
posed. The father of Tancred was an Italian marquess, Odo. Ralph 
of Caen was the personal friend and companion of Tancrcd in Pales- 
tine after the Crusade. 

f " pivi bel di maniere e di sembianti 
piu eccelso ed intrepido di core," &c. 

La Gerusal. Llherata. can. i. 45. 

But the poet has here only echoed the praises which the qualities 
of Tancred extorted even from the Greek princes, never unwilling to 
detract from the virtues of a Latin, above all a Norman name. — Anna 
Comncna, p. 277. 



<b TUE FIRST CRUSADE. 

Such were the leaders under whom the warlike 
array of the Western nations was marshalled for the 
First Crusade. Their confederate powers were col- 
lected, according to the local convenience or pre- 
ference of the chieftains, into four great divisions. 
The hrst body, composed of the nobility of the 
Rhenish provinces and the more northern parts of 
Germany, ranged themselves under the standard of 
Godfrey of Bouillon. That prince was accompanied 
by the two Baldwins, and many other powerful 
feudal lords, whose forces numbered no less than ten 
thousand cavalry and eighty thousand foot. In the 
second division, under the Counts of Vermandois and 
Chartres, the two Roberts, and Eustace, Count of 
Boulogne, (brother of Godfrey,) were assembled the 
chivalry of Central and Northern France, the British 
Isles, Normandy, and Flanders f and their formidable 
muster can be estimated only loosely from the asser- 
tion of a contemporary, that the number of lesser 
barons alone exceeded that of the Grecian warriors at 
the siege of Troy.f The third host, in the order of 
departure, was composed of Southern Italians under 
Boemond and Tancred, and formed an array of ten 
thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. The last 

* For " neither surely," says old Fuller, " did the Irishmen's feet 
stick in their bogs." (Hist, of Ilohj War, lib. i. c. 13.) go also 
sings Tasso : 

" Questi dair alte sclve irsuti inanda 
La diyisa dal mondo ultima Irlanda." 
t Guibcrt, p. 48. 



CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. / I 

division, which assembled under the Count of Thou- 
louse in the South of France, was originally formed 
chiefly of his own vassals and native confederates of 
Languedoc, Gascony, and Aries, comprehended under 
the general appellation of Provencals ;'''• with a small 
admixture of the Christian knighthood of the Pyre- 
nean regions of Spain : but in his route through 
Lombardy, his army was swollen by so great num- 
bers of Northern Italians, that the combined host 
which marched under his banners amounted to one 
hundred thousand persons of all arms and conditions. 
Besides several feudal chieftains of distinction, Ray- 
mond was accompanied by three prelates of high 
rank : the papal Legate Adhemar of Puy, the Arch- 
bishop of Toledo, and the Bishop of Orange.f 

Of all the principal leaders of the Crusade, the 
preparations of Godfrey of Bouillon were earliest 
completed ; and his march from the banks of the 
Moselle was conducted with admirable prudence and 
order by the same route which had proved so disas- 
trous to the preceding rabble. When he reached the 
northern frontiers of Hungary, he demanded of its 
king by his envoys an explanation of the circum- 
stances which had provoked their destruction. The 
reply of Carloman exposed the crimes by which the 
vengeance of his people had been roused; and his 
just and amicable representations compelled the up- 



* Raymond des Agilcs, p. 144. f Willermus Tyr. p. 



GGO. 



78 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

right judgment of Godfrey to admit that the -wicked- 
ness of the crusading mob had merited its fate. He 
accepted a friendly invitation from the Hungarian- 
king ; treated with him for a safe passage through his 
dominions with supphes of provisions on equitable 
terms; and left his own brother Baldwin and his 
family as hostages for the good faith and forbearance 
which he enforced on all his followers. The noble 
sincerity of Godfrey won the confidence of the Hunga- 
rian monarch, and disarmed the suspicion and hos- 
tility of his people. Carloman himself attended the 
movements of the crusaders with a numerous cavalry, 
both to observe their behaviour and to protect their 
march ; the -whole of his kingdom was traversed 
without a single act of offence on either side; and, 
when the Latin host had passed its southern confines, 
the hostages were courteously dismissed with a 
friendly adieu. AVhen the crusaders entered the 
Byzantine provinces, their virtuous and able leader 
still succeeded in maintaining the same strict disci- 
pline ; the Emperor Alexius assisted and rewarded 
his efibrts by liberally supplying the wants of his 
army in its toilsome passage through the desolate 
forests of Bulgaria; and the first division of the Eu- 
ropean chivalry peaceably accomplished its entrance 
into the fertile plains of Thrace.'-' 

■■^ Albert, p. 198, 199. Willci-mus Tyr. p. 052 



CRUSADERS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 



79 




SECTION V. 

THE FIRST CRUSADERS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 

^^UT for the friendly succour of 
the Byzantine monarch, it is 
acknowledged that the host of 
Godfrey must have perished in 
their route through provinces 
imperfectly cultivated, and al- 
ready exhausted by the feuds 
of their barbarous natives. The 
alacrity with which Alexius at 
first facilitated the approach of 
his Latin allies, was succeeded 
by indications of a more du- 




80 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

bious policy; and, in the report of their chroniclers, 
the conduct of the emperor is branded with the re- 
proach of deliberate perfidy and systematic hostility. 
In weighing the justice of these charges, some reduc- 
tion from their truth must be made for the bigoted 
prejudice of the Latins against a schismatic monarch 
and nation ; and a still larger share of extenuation 
for the suspicious conduct of the emperor may be 
claimed for the difficulties and peril of his position. 
Instead of the reasonable aid which he had solicited 
from the pope and the temporal sovereigns of the 
West, he found his dominions overwhelmed, and his 
throne shaken from its foundations, by the deluge 
of European fanaticism. His hospitable reception of 
the first disorderly masses of pilgrims had been re- 
quited by the ravage of his territories and the spolia- 
tion of his subjects : the very numbers and formida- 
ble array of the better-disciplined chivalry of Europe 
might alone have justified a prudent apprehension of 
their power and disposition, which their fierce prompti- 
tude in resenting was by no means calculated to allay. 
Of the personal characters and real designs of most 
of their leaders he was utterly ignorant ; and their 
alliance in the same enterprise with his ancient and 
dangerous enemy, Boemond, was at least an ominous 
conjuncture. The plea of delivering the Holy Sepul- 
chre from the hands of the Turks, might easily cover 
•a design of subjugating the whole Eastern world to 
the spiritual dominion of the Latin Church ; the same 



CRUSADERS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 81 

pretext of fanatical zeal might be readily employed 
against the infidel Mohammedans and heretical 
Greeks; and to the confident valour and the en- 
vious cupidity of the Western warriors, thus ani- 
mated by religious hatred and temporal ambition, the 
rich spoils of Constantinople'" and its provinces might 
offer a more accessible and tempting prey than the 
distant relief of Jerusalem and plunder of Syria. 
Moreover, the recent distraction and rapid decay of 
the Seljukian power had terminated the alarm with 
which Alexius formerly anticipated the entire ruin of 
his empire ; and the subsiding of the Turkish ener- 
gies had removed the immediate danger which in- 
duced him to implore the approach, and might have 



* Of the astonisliment and envy witli wliicli the splendour of Con- 
stantinople struck the rude Latins, we may form a lively idea from 
the burst of admiration which the remembrance of its magnificence 
recalls to the mind of one of their chroniclers, the chaplain and 
companion of the Count of Chartres : ''0 quanta civitas nobilis et 
decora ! quot monasteria quotque palatia in ea, opere miro fabrcfacta ! 
quot etiam plateis vel in vicis opera, ad spectandum mirabilia ! Tas- 
dium est quidem magnum recitare quanta sit ibi opulentia bonorum 
omnium, auri et argenti," &c. Fulcherius, p. o8G. — (Oh ! what a 
fine and noble city is this ! How many palaces and monasteries, 
constructed with admirable skill, it contains ! how many works of 
art, wonderful to behold, are to be found in its streets and shops ! 
It would be, indeed, a tedious matter to tell how great is its riches 
in all kinds of goods, of both gold and silver.) The emotions ex- 
cited by the contemplation of such wealth, however innocent in the 
breast of the good chaplain, were likely to prompt dangerous wishes 
and designs to the bold and unscrupulous imaginations of fierce and 
rapacious warriors. 



82 TUE FIRST CKUSADE. 

reconciled him to the presence of auxiliaries, in Greek 
estimation scarcely more civilized, and only less to be 
dreaded, than the Mohammedan enemy. 

Under these critical circumstances, for the double 
purpose of averting the ruin with which he was me- 
naced, and of obtaining the advantages which he might 
yet hope to extract from the oppressive aid of the West- 
ern nations, the emperor appears to have had recourse 
to the timid and tortuous policy habitual in the Byzan- 
tine court. While he welcomed the approach of the 
army of Godfrey, his fleets in the Adriatic were pre- 
pared to dispute the passage of the French and Nor- 
man crusaders from the Italian to the Grecian ports. 
That second grand division of the European chivalry, 
led by Hugh of Vermandois, the two Roberts, and the 
Count of Chartres, had traversed France and Italy 
for the purpose of embarkation. At Lucca, where 
these chiefs, prostrating themselves at the feet of the 
pope, piously received his benediction. Urban II. com- 
mitted the standard of St. Peter into the hands of the 
great Count of France ; '=' and here the arrogance of 
that prince furnished Alexius with a first occasion of 
offence. Twenty-four knights, in armour gorgeously 
inlaid with gold, were despatched by Hugh to Du- 
razzo, with a haughty intimation to Alexius himself 
of the approach, and a command to the imperial lieu- 
tenant to make royal preparation for the arrival of 

* Fulcherius, p. 384. Robertus Monachus, p. 35. 



CRUSADERS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 



83 



the brother of the King of Kings, and standard-bearer 
of the pope.* The terms of the letter and the mes- 
sage were resented as an insult ; and the Governor of 
Durazzo, instead of offering the desired reception, sta- 
tioned his navy to prevent the egress of the great 
count and his followers from the Italian harbours. 
The Duke of Normandy, and the Counts of Flanders 
and Chartres, with their followers, after consuming 
the autumn in luxurious pleasure, resolved to defer 
their departure from Italy until the return of spring ; 
but Hugh, regardless alike of the dangers of a wintry 
passage and the ambiguous disposition of the Greeks, 
impatiently put to sea. His fleet was dispersed in a 
storm; his own vessel was wrecked on the hostile 
shore ; and, in lieu of the magnificent descent which 
he had announced, he entered Durazzo as a suppliant, 
and found himself a captive. He was, indeed, treated 
with outward demonstrations of respect ; but his per- 
son was for some time detained, until the commands 
of Alexius were received for his removal to Constan- 
tinople. f 

When the intelligence of the captivity of the Count 
of Vermandois reached the camp of Godfrey in 



* Anna Comnena, p. 228. Du Cange, with the true comphicent 
vanity of a Frenchman, has amused himself by proving (Dissert, siir 
Joinville, xxvii., and note ad Alexiad. p. 352) that the title of King 
of Kings thus arrogated by Hugh for his brother, was conceded 
through the respect of Europe during the Middle Ages par excellence 
to the monarchs of France. 

t Anna Comnena, p. 228, 229. 



84 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

Thrace, it roused the violent anger of the crusaders ; 
and, after an incflectual demand for his release, the 
Duke of Brabant was compelled to gratify the eager 
desire which was felt by liis followers to punish the 
imperial perfidy with the ravage of the fine province 
in which they were quartered. This severe retalia^ 
tion speedily produced the submission of Alexius. 
He had already soothed the captivity, and seduced 
the pride and vanity of the French prince, by his 
pompous reception at the imperial court; and Hugh 
was induced to despatch two of his own attendants to 
Godfrey with the assurance that, on the duke's arrival 
at Constantinople, he would find their master not a 
captive, but a guest. This message produced a cessa- 
tion of hostilities ; but the awakened suspicions of the 
crusaders prepared them to fly to arms on the slight- 
est provocation ; the Greeks were equally distrustful ; 
and the mutual contempt and hatred of two races, so 
dissimilar in manners and spirit, inflamed every mis- 
understanding. On the near approach of Godfrey and 
his host to the Byzantine capital, the refusal of the 
duke and his fellow-chieftains to trust their persons 
unattended with the imperial walls, provoked Alexius 
to forbid all intercourse between his subjects and the 
crusaders. The Latin camp was immediately strait- 
ened for provisions ; and Godfrey was again compelled 
to indulge the rapine of his followers, and the empe- 
ror to arrest the sufferings of his people by concilia- 
tory measures. A third and more dangerous quarrel 



CRUSADERS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 85 

was produced by the belief of the crusaders in a per- 
fidious design of the emperor to blockade and starve 
them in their camp, which was enclosed by the waters 
of the Bosphorus, the Black Sea, and the river Bar- 
byses. To anticipate this suspected treachery, the 
troops of Godfrey possessed themselves, by an impe- 
tuous attack, of the bridge of the Blachernae, the only 
outlet and key of their communication with Constan- 
tinople and the open country. The hostile seizure of 
this important post disappointed the intentions of the 
Greeks ; or it more probably excited their apprehen- 
sion against the ulterior purpose of the crusaders 
themselves. The imperial troops issued from the 
gates of Constantinople to dispute the passage of the 
bridge ; after a bloody conflict, they were repulsed and 
pursued to the city ; and the crusaders, inflamed 
with success and resentment, even attempted a head- 
long assault upon the walls. But the ramparts of 
Constantinople were strong and lofty ; the Latins 
were unprovided with any battering engines ; and the 
Greek archers, securely directing an unerring aim, 
galled them with an incessant flight of arrows. An 
indecisive contest was maintained until the close of 
day ; but at nightfall the assailants, after setting fire 
to the suburbs, withdrew from the walls.* 

To a state of hostility so inconclusive in its objects, 



* Albertus Aquensis, p. 200-202. Balcli-icus Arcli. p. 91. Wil- 
lermus Tyr. p. 653, 654. Anna Comnena, p. 232-234. 



86 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

and injurious to both parties, a stop was now put by 
the meditation of the Count of Vermandois. If 
Alexius had ever really meditated the destruction of 
the crusaders, experience had shewn the fruitlessness 
of his efforts; and his desire of an accommodation 
might be increased by the approach of Boemond and 
his army. Renouncing, therefore, his earlier designs, 
or more probably only shifting the jealous expedients 
of a policy which had prompted him in self-defence to 
restrict, not to ruin the dreaded power of the cru- 
saders, he proposed to their chiefs, as a condition of 
his friendship, that they should take an oath of fealty 
to himself, and swear either to restore to the empire, 
or to hold in feudal dependence,"-' such of its ancient 
provinces as they might recover from the infidels. 
Upon these terms, he engaged vigorously to suj)port 
the Crusade with the imperial forces and wealth; and 
he had prepared the way for their acceptance by 
inducing the brother of the French king to offer an 
influential precedent. 



* Anna Comncna, p. 235. The very circumstance of this proposal 
being made, is a proof, which perhaps deserves more attention than it 
has usually attracted, that the idea of the feudal relation, whensoever 
received, was at this epoch familiar to the Eastern emperor. It is 
still more observable that the ceremonies with which the Latin 
princes subsequently took the oaths of fealty to Alexius were also 
strictly feudal ; and though their ready adoption on this occasion in 
the Byzantine court need not shake our belief in the exclusiveh' 
barbarian and not Roman origin and existence of the system from 
which they were borrowed, yet the whole fact is curious. 



CRUSADERS AT CONST ANTIOPLE. 87 

So overcome was tlmt vain and inconsistent prince 
by the blandishments and presents of Alexius, that 
he not only stooped to the performance of the desired 
homage himself, but undertook to obtain the same 
submission from his confederates. The proposal was 
at first received in the Latin camp with the indig- 
nation natural to the free and fiery spirit of high-born 
warriors, who spurned the idea of all allegiance or 
subjection to a foreign lord. Godfrey himself re- 
proached the baseness of Hugh in having consented 
to a degradation alike unworthy of his haughty pre- 
tensions and real dignit}^, of his ostentatious bearing 
and royal birth. But the Count of Vermandois ex- 
cused his own compliance, and enforced its propriety 
on Godfrey, by arguments best adapted to the dis- 
interested principles of that single-minded and jDious 
prince : such as the paramount obligation of their 
sacred vows; the difficulty of reducing Alexius to 
more becoming terms; the impossibility of prosecut- 
ing the holy enterprise without the imperial aid ; the 
probable ruin of the cause by delay and wasting hos- 
tility; and the very sinfulness of a contest with a 
Christian people. The reason of Godfrey was no 
sooner convinced, than all sentiments of worldly 
pride and honour yielded to the humbler dictates of 
religious duty; and no subsequent persuasions, with 
which he was addressed by the messengers of Boe- 
mond and the Count of Thoulouse, to await their 
arrival, and chastise in arms the insulting demand of 



88 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

Alexius, could shako the sincerity of his purpose. He 
declared his resolution to take the required oaths of 
fealty ; and the example of his self-denial secured the 
acquiescence of his compeers. To remove their 
lingering suspicions of treachery, Alexius delivered 
his son as a hostage for their safe return ; and Godfrey 
and his principal companions, repairing to Constanti- 
nople, prostrated themselves in homage before the 
imperial throne. Their humiliation was relieved by 
a reception of studied honour; and in return for the 
vows of fidelity "vvhich he repeated on his knees with 
clasped hands, Alexius distinguished the virtue and 
dignity of Godfrey by the ceremonies of filial adop- 
tion, and investiture in imperial robes.'-' But these 
empty recognitions faintly concealed the real triumph 
of Greek pride and policy; and it was no fanciful 
degradation which converted the brave and chivalric 
princes and nobles of Western Europe into the vassals 
and liegemen of a Byzantine despot.f 

* Anna Comnena, p. 335, 238. Albert, p. 203. Willcrmus Tyr. 
p. 656, 657. 

f That the humiliation was keenly felt may be inferred from the 
sullen brevity with which the Latin chroniclers dismiss the transac- 
tion; but the daughter of Alexius has related an anecdote, which 
more plainly marks the struggling emotions of the proud warriors, 
while it amusingly illustrates the manners of Western Europe. Dur- 
ing the ceremony of performing homage, a private French baron, 
conjectured by Du Cange, with great probability, to have been 
Robert of Paris, was so little disposed to repress his disgust at the 
pride of the Greek despot, and the compliance to which religious or 
political motives had induced the more responsible leaders of the Cru- 



CRUSADERS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 89 

After this ceremony, Alexius urged his adopted 
son, and his new dependants, to exchange their 
threatening position near his capital for more eligible 
and abundant quarters on the Asiatic side of the 
Bosphorus; and their passage of that strait was ap- 
parently hastened, through his dread of their being 
reinforced, while still under the walls of Constanti- 
nople, by the other divisions of the crusading host. 
Before the departure of Godfrey, the Count of 
Flanders and his followers had already reached the 
Byzantine capital from Italy ; and their arrival was 
speedily succeeded, at short intervals, by that of the 
Duke of Normandy, the Count of Chartres, and the 

sade to submit, that he audaciously seated himself beside Alexius on 
the imperial throne. When the brother of Duke Godfrey attempted 
to reprove him for this rude disrespect, he coolly retorted his con- 
tempt; and the emperor was so astonished by his insolence, that he 
could only demand through an interpreter his name and condition. 
" I am a Frenchman," was the reply, " and of noble birth j and I 
care only to know that in the neighbourhood from which I come 
there is a church, whither they who design to prove their valour 
repair to pray until an adversary be found to answer their defiance. 
There have I often worshipped, without finding that man who dared 
to accept my challenge." Alexius, because he well knew, says his 
daughter, the fierce spirit of the Latins, dissembled his resentment, 
or rather vented it in an ironical caution, that if the Frenchman still 
desired to maintain the same boast with safety, in his crusading 
warfare, he would do well to keep beyond reach of the Turkish 
arrows, by remaining in the centre of the Christian host. His taunt 
and his advice were thrown away j and his daughter betrays some 
satisfaction in proceeding to record that the insolent barbarian fell in 
the foremost ranks of the Crusaders at the battle of Dorylaeum. 
Anna Comnena, uhi svprd,. 



90 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 




The Emperor Alexius. 

scattered residue of the great army which had 
originally assembled under Hugh of Vermandois. By 
the dexterous application of flatteries* and bribes, 
each of these potent chiefs was persuaded in his turn 
to perform the same homage as his precursors,f and 
was then hurried off to join them on the Asiatic 



* Even the politic Count of Chartres was deluded by the arts of 
Alexius, who contrived to make each of the Latin princes in turn 
believe himself preferred to all his confederates. There is extant a 
curious and apparently authentic epistle from Stephen to his 
countess, in which he unconsciously shows how completely he was 
duped by the wily Greek. The emperor had inquired liow many 
were his children ; spoken much of the love he bore toward him and 
his unknown house ; pretended that the count must send for one of 
his sons to be educated at the Byzantine court j and bade him reckon 
on his imperial favour to provide for the youth : in all which the 
wise count religiously confided. Mabillon, Mus. Ital. vol. i 237. 

t Baldric, p. 92. Albert, p. 204. Willermus Tyr. p. G58-GG0. 



CRUSADERS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 91 

shore. The embarkation from the Apulian ports of 
the third grand division, under Boemond and Tan- 
cred; their passage of the Adriatic into Greece; and 
their march through that country, were all regulated 
by those able leaders with higher martial conduct and 
discipline. Large bodies of the imperial troops, with 
dubious intentions, hovered over their route, and 
sometimes even attempted to obstruct their passage, 
and cut off their detachments ; but the skilful dis- 
positions of Boemond frustrated their attempts; and 
the impetuous valour of Tancred more than once 
punished the secret perfidy or open aggression of a 
pusillanimous enemy. The whole march to the 
vicinity of Constantinople was triumphantly com- 
pleted; and here Boemond, being met by Godfrey 
himself with persuasions to satisfy the imperial de- 
mand of fealty, left his army in charge of his gallant 
kinsman, and with a small train proceeded to the 
capital of Alexius.* 

The belief of that monarch's duplicity in his re- 
ception of the other Latin princes is increased by the 
equal cordiality with which he welcomed this hateful 
enemy. He alluded to Boemond's earlier invasion of 
his empire only to extol the valour which he had dis- 
played in that enterprise, and to express his own 
satisfaction at the pacific union which now effaced 
every feeling of enmity. With as consummate hypo- 

* Robertus Monachus, p. 36, 37. Baldricus Arcliiepiscopus, p. 92. 
Guibert, p. 488. Willermus Tyr. p. 658. 



92 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

crisy, Boemond on his part professed his self-reproach 
at the injustice of his former hostihty, and his desire 
to prove his gratitude for so gracious an obHvion of 
injuries. But Alexius, as well aware of his ambitious 
and greedy character as of his habitual faithlessness, 
designed to secure his allegiance by the only motives 
of selfish interest which could be binding on a nature 
so sordid. After causing him to be lodged and en- 
tertained in the most magnificent style in one of the 
imperial palaces, the cunning monarch ordered the 
door of a chamber filled with heaps of gold and jewels 
to be left, as if accidently, open when he passed. The 
Norman was ravished with delight and envy as he 
gazed at the glittering hoards; and his ruling im- 
pulses were betrayed in the involuntary exclamation, 
that, to the possessor of such treasures, the conquest 
of a kingdom might be an easy achievement. He 
was immediately informed that the gift of the em- 
peror made them his own ; and, after a slight hesita- 
tion, his avarice swallowed the bait. His perform- 
ance of homage to Alexius was succeeded by dreams 
of ambition, which perhaps aspired to the imperial 
throne itself; and his expressions of devotion to its 
service were accompanied by a proposal that he 
should be invested with the office of Great Domestic 
of the East, or General of the Byzantine armies in 
Asia. A present compliance with this audacious de- 
mand, which shocked the pride, and might well 
startle the suspicions of Alexius, was prudently 



CRUSADERS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 93 

avoided with hollow assurances that the hidiest dis- 
nities of the empire should be the reward of future 
services ; and the baffled or sanguine adventurer was 
persuaded to join the Asiatic camp of his confede- 
rates. The opposite conduct of his high-minded 
relative had meanwhile excited equal alarm. Dis- 
daining, on his arrival at Constantinople, to imitate 
the baseness of Boemond, Tancred had quitted the 
capital unobserved, and crossed the Bosphorus in dis- 
guise. By this flight he had only designed to escape 
the degradation of owning himself the vassal of a 
foreign prince; but the suspicion and resentment of 
the emperor were not allayed until Boemond unscru- 
pulously pledged himself by oath for the homage and 
allegiance of his cousin.* 

The arrival of the last army of crusaders under the 
Count of Thoulouse, exhausted the artifices of the 
imperial policy. After traversing Northern Italy, 
that skilful and veteran commander had led his forces 
into the Byzantine provinces, through the wild passes 
of Dalmatia. His march, though distressed by the 
noxious climate and rugged obstacles of that moun- 
tainous region, and successively harassed by the sa- 
vage Dalmatians, and by the no less hostile Greeks, 
had been prosecuted with so much energy and vigi- 
lance, that his host, after exercising a passing ven- 

* Baldric, p. 92-94. Albertis Aquensis, p. 204. Guibert, p. 491. 
Willermus Tyr. p. 659. Anna Comnena, p. 238-241. Iladulphus 
Cadomensis, de Gcstis Tancredi, p. 289, 290. 



94 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

geance on their treacherous assailants, reached the 
shores of the Bosphorus in unimpaired strength and 
discipline ; and the news of his formidable approach 
at the head of one hundred thousand Provencals and 
Italians, revived the liveliest apprehensions in the 
imperial court. At some distance from Constanti- 
nople, the army was met by messengers both from 
Alexius and from Godfrey and his associates, with a 
united request to the Count of Thoulouse to repair to 
the capital. Raymond complied with the invitation ; 
but, on his arrival, neither the arts of the emperor, 
nor the solicitations of his confederates, could induce 
him to kneel before the imperial throne. Once more 
is the emperor accused, on his failure in this negotia- 
tion, of having directed a treacherous surjDrise of the 
Provencal camp ; and, whatever was its origin, a fu- 
rious collision ensued between the troops of Raymond 
and of Alexius. The Greeks were defeated with sig- 
nal carnage; and, in the first suggestions of ven- 
geance, the Count of Thoulouse was with difficulty 
restrained from vowing war to the utterance against 
so perfidious a race. He repelled with contempt the 
menaces both of Alexius and of Boemond, who now 
ostentatiously avowing himself the most faitliful 
champion of the empire, proclaimed his resolution to 
turn his arms in its succour even against his recusant 
confederate. To the milder expostulations of God- 
frey, the aged count so far yielded as to tender an 
oath that he would abstain from all enterprises against 



CRUSADERS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 95 

the life and dignity of Alexius ; but beyond this con- 
cession his cold and stubborn pride was equally im- 
penetrable to threats and entreaties. He declared 
that he had quitted his native dominions to devote 
the residue of his life to the service of God alone, not 
to submit himself to any earthly master ; and Alexius, 
either awed into personal respect by the firmness of 
his spirit, or desirous of conciliating so powerful a 
chief, suddenly changed his whole demeanour, loaded 
him with assiduous attentions, and treated him with 
such real or affected confidence as to impart his secret 
hatred and suspicion of Boemond. The old Provencal 
prince listened with pleasure to these complaints of a 
rival whose interference had already irritated his jea- 
lous and vindictive temper ; and his heated passions 
unguarding the usual wariness of his politic judg- 
ment, made him an easy dupe to the superior craft of 
the wily Greek. Alexius so completely gained the 
ascendency over his mind, that he lingered at Con- 
stantinople after the departure of the other chief- 
tains; and the Count of Thoulouse, who had been 
loudest in his denunciations against the perfidy of the 
Byzantine court, was among the last to quit its se- 
ductive hospitalities for the Asiatic camp of the cru- 
saders.* 

* Raymond de Agiles, p. 140, 141. Robert, p. 38. Guibert, 
p. 490. Willermus Tyr. p. 660-662. Anna Comnena, p. 241. 



96 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 




*<»^'- 



SECTIOiT VI. 



THE SIEGE OF NICE. 




EFORE the arrival of the Provencal 
forces, all the other great divisions of 
the crusading levies had already com- 
pleted their junction on the plains of 
Asia Minor; and their wants rather 
than their strength had been increased by the wretched 
remnants of the preceding mob, who, with Peter the 
Hermit himself, had, in recovered confidence, found 
their way from various places of refuge to the general 
muster. The enormous numbers of the congregated 
hosts of Christendom can be estimated with little 
hope of precision ; either from the tumid metaphors 
of the Grecian Princes, who has described their deso- 
lating course, or from the positive assertions of the 



THE SIEGE OF NICE. 97 

Latin writers, whose ignorance of military affairs 
might easily mislead their computations, and whose 
astonishment at the view of so prodigious an array 
was sure to be vented in exaggeration. If we were 
to credit some of our usual authorities, six or seven 
hundred thousand warriors were present in arms; 
besides an innumerable multitude of ecclesiastics, 
women, and children.* But the report of the same 
party in other places,f and everj^ evidence of reason 
and probability, are alike inconsistent with this con- 
clusion ; it may be suspected that the leaders of the 
war were themselves unable to ascertain the real 
numbers of a disorderly herd of irregular infantry ; 
and we can rely with safety only on the statement 
of the most judicious chronicler of the Crusade, that 
the mailed cavalry, which, according to the rude 
tactics of the Middle Ages, formed the nerve of armies, 
amounted to one hundred thousand men. J This su- 
perb body of heavy horse was composed of the flower 
of the European chivalry : knights, esquires, and their 
attendant men-at-arms, completed equijDped with the 
hehnet and shield, the coat and boots of chain and 
scale-armour, the lance and the sword, the battle-axe 
and the ponderous mace of iron. The crowd of foot- 
men fought principally with the long and cross bow, and 
were used indifferently as occasion required for archers, 

* Fulcher. p. 387. Willermus Tjr. p. 6G4. 
t Willermus Tyr. p. 693, &c. 
+ Guibert, p. 491. 

7 



98 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

scouts, and pioneers ; but their half-armed and motley 
condition formed a miserable contrast to the splendour 
of the chivalric array, which glittered in the blazonry 
of embroidered and ermiucd surcoats, shields and head- 
pieces inlaid with gems and gold, and banners and 
pennons distinguishing the princely and noble rank 
of chieftains and knights.* 

From their first camp on the Asiatic shores of the 
Bosphorus, the advance of the Christian hosts, in bold 
disregard of minor objects of attack, was immediately 
directed against Nice, the capital of the Sultan of 
Roum,f situated in a fertile plain on the direct route 
to Jerusalem. Resting on the waters of the lake 
Ascanius, the defensive capabilities of that city had 
been sedulously improved by art. It was surrounded 
by a double wall of stupendous height and thickness, 
provided with a deep ditch, and Hanked at intervals 
by no less than three hundred and seventy towers ; 
its garrison was numerous and brave ; and the Sultan 
Solyman, (or Kilidge Arslan,);j; who had retired to 

* Albert. Aqucnsis, p. 103, 212, 241, 392, &c. This writer fondly 
dwells on the splendid array of the crusading hosts, and affords us 
more information than any of the other chroniclers on the arma- 
ment, composition, &c. of the troops. 

■{■ lloum, a corruption of Roma, (Rome,) was the name given to 
the Mussulman kingdom, founded in Asia Minor by the Seljoukian 
Turks, about the year 1074, and of which Nicaja, or Nice, the chief 
city of Bythinia, was the capital. It was against this city, where 
the first General Council of the Church was assembled under Cod- 
stantine, A. d. 325, that the crusading army now marched. 

I De Guignes, vol. i. 245. 



THE SIEGE OF NICE. 99 

the neighbouring mountains with his Turkish cavahy, 
preserving his communication with the phace by the 
lake, might with equal facility reinforce its defenders, 
and harass the quarters of the besiegers. Nothing 
deterred by these difficulties, the crusaders, on their 
arrival before the city, undertook the siege with an 
energy suitable to the obstinacy which was anticipated 
in the defence. Notwithstanding their numbers, the 
immense circumference of the walls prevented a com- 
plete investment; but each independent leader, suc- 
cessively encamping on the first quarter which he 
found unoccupied, from thence directed and prosecuted 
his attacks. Contrary to the impressions which later 
historians have sometimes given, that a chief author- 
ity over the crusading hosts was conceded to Duke 
Godfrey, it is here observable that no traces of such a 
recognition of supremacy can be discovered in the 
narrative of contemporary chroniclers. The general 
plan of operations was sometimes debated and deter- 
mined in a council of princes; but the details and 
choice of execution were abandoned to the uncontrol- 
lable will of the different chieftains and their respec- 
tive followers, who were alike too proud of personal 
rank, and too jealous of national distinctions, to brook 
any submission to a foreign command. But the same 
feelings which were repugnant to all subordination 
and unity of action, in a great degree supplied their 
want with a generous emulation of glory ; and, in the 
leaguer of Nice, the Latin princes contended with 



100 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

rival valour and industry who should be foremost in 
urging his approaches to the walls. On the northern 
side were encamped Duke Godfrey and his Rhenish 
and German division ; eastward extended the quarters 
of the Counts of Vermandois and Chartres and the 
two Roberts, wuth the French, Norman, English, and 
Flemish crusaders ; on the same front, the Provencal 
and Italian host of the Count of Thoulouse took up a 
continued alignement ; and, toward the south, the city 
was enclosed by the troops of Boemond and Tancred. 
Two thousand men who had attended the march of 
the crusaders, under Taticius, as imperial lieutenant, 
were the only Byzantine forces in the confederate 
camp.''' 

From their respective quarters, each of these divi- 
sions pushed forward its attacks, with all the mecha- 
nical expedients which the Middle Ages had im- 
perfectly preserved out of the martial science of clas- 
sical antiquity. Among the principal machines of the 
besiegers were lofty wooden towers of several stories, 
termed helfredi,-\ or helfwis, which were moved for- 
ward on rollers or wheels ; protected against confla- 
gration by coverings of boiled hides ; filled with 
archers to dislodge the defenders from the ramparts ; 
and supplied with drawbidges, which, on a nearer 
approach, being let down upon the walls, afforded a 

* Robert. Mon. p. 39, 40. Albert. Aquen.sis, p. 204, 205. Wil- 
Icrmus Tyr. p. GGG. Anna Comncna, p. 247- 
j Du Cango v. Bdfredus. 



THE SIEGE OF NICE. 101 

passage for the knights and their followers to rush to 
the assault. The advance of these helfrois was some- 
time preceded, the road levelled, and the ditch of a 
fortress filled up, by means of a movable gallery or 
shed of similar materials, but lower structure, called 
indifferently a fox or cat,* or cliat-cliateil when sur- 
mounted also by a tower. Under cover of these gal- 
leries, the walls could either be undermined by the 
slow operation of the sap, or breached by the violent 
blows of the battering-ram. Balistic engines of va- 
rious sizes and denominations for hurling masses of 
rock, beams of timber, stones, and darts, composed the 
ordinary artiller}^ both of the assailants and besieged ; 
and the most effectual means of defence were afforded 
by the use of the Greek fire in destroying the hostile 
machines.-j* 

The mechanical operations of the crusaders were 
for a while arrested by the gallant efforts of the Sul- 
tan of Roum, who, descending from the mountains 
which overhang the plain of Nice with a swarm of 
fifty thousand horse, endeavoured by a sudden and 
impetuous attack, with the assistance of the garrison, 
to overpower the Eastern camp of the Christians. But 
his hope of surprising their quarters was frustrated by 
the capture of the messengers who were intrusted to 
convey his purpose to the city; he everywhere en- 



* Idem, vv. Catus, Viilj^cs, &e. 

f Muratori, Antiq. Med. jEvi, Diss. xxvi. 



102 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

countered a determined resistance and a bloody re- 
pulse ; and his first experience of the valour of the 
Western Christians compelled him to abandon Nice to 
its fate. The defence of the city was not the less 
resolutely maintained ; and the attempts of the be- 
siegers to breach the walls were repeatedly foiled, 
their projectile engines disabled, and their towers and 
galleries crushed by fragments of rock, or burned by 
the Greek fire. Some weeks had already been con- 
sumed in fruitless labour and slaughter, when the 
position of the city on the lake Ascanius suggested to 
the besiegers a more successful expedient. At their 
desire, Alexius caused a number of small vessels to 
be prepared in his arsenals, transported over land, and 
launched upon the lake. This flotilla, manned by 
seamen and archers in the imperial pay, insured the 
command of the lake, alarmed the city on that side 
with desultory attacks, and intercepting all its com- 
munication by water with the exterior country, com- 
pleted the investment of the place.'=' 

Meanwhile the besiegers continued their works with 
renewed spirit. The A^eteran Count of Thoulouse, 
whose approaches had been conducted with most skill 
and pertinacity, at length succeeded, by the science of 
a Lombard engineer, in attaching with safety a clait- 
chateil, or castellated gallery, to one of the towers of 



* Albert, p. 205, 206. Willermus Tyr. p. 667. Anna Com- 
nena, p. 245. 



THE SIEGE OF NICE. 103 

the city, which had been injured in a former siege, 
and was bent forward from its base. The miners of 
the besiegers ^Dropped the superincumbent mass with 
strong timbers while they loosened the foundations ; 
and the supports being then fired, the whole fell with 
a tremendous crash, and left a yawning breach. But, 
instead of seizing the first moment of consternation 
by which the garrison were paralyzed, the Provencals 
imprudently delayed the assault until the following 
morning; and an artful Greek contrived in the inter- 
val to rob them of the fruits of success. The wife 
and sister of the Sultan, whom he had left in the citv 
until this moment, endeavoured on the first alarm to 
escape over the lake ; they were captured by the im- 
perial flotilla ; and Butomite, its commander, imme- 
diately offered, not only their honourable release, but 
protection to the people of Nice against the fury of 
the Latins, if the city were surrendered to his master. 
The now despairing inhabitants accepted his terms ; 
the troops of the flotilla disembarking were admitted 
into the city ; and when the crusaders, with returning 
day, were prepared to mount the breach of the fallen 
tower, the first spectacle which they beheld was the 
imperial banner floating on its walls. [20 th June, 
1097.] In their wounded pride and disappointed 
cupidity at being thus cheated of the honour and 
spoils of victory, the first impulse of the crusaders 
was to continue the assault. But a prudential con- 
sideration of the ulterior objects of the war induced 



104 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

their princes to stifle their own emotions of disgust at 
the artifice of Alexius or his lieutenant, and to ap- 
pease the louder resentment of their followers ; and, 
after a few days of repose, the whole crusading host, 
breaking up from the camp before Nice, pursued the 
destined route toward Jerusalem/^' 

* Fulcher. Carnot. p. 387. Raymond dc Agiles, p. 142. Bal- 
dric. Arch. p. 97. Albert, p. 20G-208. Guibert, p. 491-193. 
Willermus Tyr. 668-672. Anna Comncna, p. 246-250. 



DEFEAT OF THE TURKS. 



105 




SECTION vn. 



DEFEAT OF THE TURKS— SEIZURE OP EDESSA. 



^N their passage through Asia Minor, 
i^ a march of five hundred miles was 
still to be accomplished before the 
crusaders could touch the confines of 
Syria ; and the. Sultan of Roum, 
whose spirit had only been roused to 
increased energy by the loss of his capital and the 
danger of his kingdom, was already prepared to ofier 
a formidable resistance to their progress. His ap- 
peal, both to his own subjects and to the independent 
chieftains of his kindred race, for assistance in repel- 




106 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

ling these new invaders, who so unexpectedly menaced 
their faith and their nation with a common destruc- 
tion, had been eagerly answered. From all sides the 
Turkish hordes flocked to his standard ; and so innu- 
merable was the force which he collected, that by some 
of the Latin writers it is supposed to have exceeded 
three hundred thousand horse. With this immense 
cloud of cavalry, during the first few days' advance 
of the crusaders from Nice, while their strength was 
fresh and their array undivided, he merely hovered on 
their flanks ; but his forbearance ceased when the con- 
venience or the necessities of their march induced 
them to separate into two distinct columns on different 
routes. In one division were now Duke Godfrey and 
the Counts of Vermandois and Thoulouse ; in the 
other, Boemond and Tancred, the Duke of Normandy, 
and the Counts of Flanders and Chartres.'=' 

Before the latter and less numerous of the two co- 
lumns had reached Dorylaium — the modern Eskische- 
ker — about fifty miles from Nice, it was suddenly 
enveloped, while reposing in a valley, by the Turkish 
swarms. The first astonishment of the surprise, the 
unearthly yells, and the furious onset of the barba- 
rians, struck dismay and disorder into the Christian 
ranks ; and the fate of the day was held in suspense 
only by the gallant example, the desperate efforts, and 



* Albert. Aqucnsis, p. 215. Willennus Tyr. p. G72. Anna 
Comnena, p. 251. 



DEFEAT OF THE TURKS. 107 

the personal prowess of the three leaders of Norman 
blood, Boemond, Tancred, and Duke Robert. While 
the lightly armed and active cavalry of the Asiatics 
easily evaded a close encounter with the heavy array 
of the Europeans, their clouds of arrows slew the 
unbarded horses, and pierced every opening in the 
body armour of the Christian warriors. Overwhelmed 
with the dense confusion of the field, oppressed by 
the ponderous weight of their own equipment, and 
fainting under the intense heat anc^ burning thirst of 
the climate, the weary and despairing crusaders with 
difficulty sustained an equal conflict. To regain some 
degree of order, their leaders could only cover a retreat 
and draw oflf their exhausted squadrons; and the 
Turks, flushed with success, penetrated into their 
camp and commenced an indiscriminate massacre of 
the aged and infirm pilgrims, the women and the 
children. 

In this extremity, the skilful and valorous conduct 
of Boemond, never elsewhere so nobly contrasted with 
the baser qualities of his character, saved the whole 
crusading host from destruction. In the first alarm 
he had, with cool foresight, despatched notice of the 
danger to the other division under Godfrey and the 
Count of Thoulouse; and now reanimating his con- 
federates and followers to rescue or revenge the help- 
less victims whose shrieks pierced tlioir ears, he 
rushed again at their head toward the camp, and fell 
with resistless impetuosity upon the triumphant and 



108 THE FIRST CKUSADE. 

sanguniary barbarians. The Duke of Normancly 
bravely supported his charge; the inspiring shout of 
" Deus I'lilt,'' which had first been heard at the Coun- 
cil of Clermont, was now the war-cry which rang 
again through the Christian squadrons; and the light 
was renewed with all the courage which a sense of 
religious duty could add to the stern resolves of 
vengeance and despair. But the Crusaders were still 
encountered with equal resolution and superior force ; 
and the tide of Turkish victory was arrested at this 
juncture only hy tlie opportune approach of Duke 
Godfrey and the Count of Vermandois, who, at the 
first summons, had urged their cavalry, forty thou- 
sand strong, at the utmost speed to the succour of 
their confederates. The junction of this formidable 
reinforcement, in fresh, firm, and ardent array, in- 
fused new life into the sinking energy of their 
brethren, and in the same proportion depressed the 
confident spirit of the Turks. The quivers of the 
infidels were already emptied ; the length of the 
struggle had worn down their activit}' ; and in the 
close combat which they could no longer escape, their 
inferiority to the warriors of the West in bodily 
strength and martial equipment was signally dis- 
played. The supple dexterity of the Asiatic was 
now feebly opposed to the ponderous strokes of the 
European arm ; the curved scimitar and light javelin 
could neither parry nor return with effect the deadly 
thrust of the long pointed sword and gigantic lance ^ 



DEFEAT OP THE TURKS. 109 

and in a direct charge, the weight and compactness 
of the Latin chivalry overpowered the loose order and 
desultory tactics of the Turkish hordes. 

While the infidel host bent and wavered before the 
determined assault of the Christians, the last division 
of the Crusaders arrived on the field; and Count 
Raymond directing his Provengals on the flank or 
rear of the disordered enemy, completed their terror 
and ruin. [4th July, 1097.] They broke and fled in 
every direction, were pursued until the close of day 
with unremitting slaughter, and were compelled to 
abandon their camp to the possession of the con- 
querors. Of the crusaders, four thousand had fallen ; 
but they were for the most part of humble condition ; 
and the number included persons of both sexes who 
were massacred when the infidels first burst into the 
Christian camp. Among the Turkish host, in the 
battle and the pursuit, thirty thousand had been 
slain ; and no less than three thousand of these were 
chieftains or warriors of distinction, whose rank was 
proclaimed by the value of the spoils found on their 
bodies. The pillage of the Asiatic camp offered a still 
richer reward to the victors, in immense quantities of 
gold and silver, arms and apparel, war-horses, camels, 
and other beasts of burden.* 

By the general confession of the Latins themselves, 
the Turks had displayed a valour and warlike skill 

*Robertus Monachus, p. 41, 42. Guibert, p. 493, 494. Willer- 
mus Tjr. p. 674. Radulphus Cadomensis, p. 293, 294. 



no 



Tlir: FIRST CRUSADE. 








A Turkish Encampment. 

wliicli excited their astonishment and deserved their 
admiration; and the surprise produced by the unex- 
pected discovery of these qualities in an Asiatic 
nation is evinced in the assertion, that they alone of 
all Eastern people were worthy of contending in arms 
with the Christian chivalry, and of sharing with the 
warriors of the West a common superiority in martini 
virtues over the despicable Greeks. The conduct of 
the Sultan of Roum, after the battle of Doryla3um, 
afforded a more unequivocal testimony of the respect 
and fear with which the prowess of the Crusaders had 
impressed the infidels themselves. Abandoninsr all 



DEFEAT OF THE TURKS. Ill 

further hope of successful resistance to the conquerors 
Solyman hastily evacuated his kingdom with the 
wreck of his army, every where ravaging the land in 
his flight ; and the crusaders were left without oppo- 
sition to continue their advance through a desolated 
and deserted country. Their march over the wasted 
plains of Asia Minor skirted the base of the great 
mountain range which stretches across that celebrated 
region from the sea of Marmora to the Syrian gates ; 
and their route may be traced on the modern map by 
the cities of Kara Hissar, Aksheer, Konich, and 
Ereckli. 

The horrors which attended the passage of so un- 
wieldy a host, undisciplined and unprovisioned by any 
of the arrangements which are flimiliar to the military 
science and economy of our own times, admit but of 
imperfect description, and may only faintly be ima- 
gined. The towns had been swept of their inhabitants 
and stores, the cultivated districts converted into a 
scathed and hungry solitude; and the more natural 
deserts which, frequently intervened were parched with 
sand and destitute of water. Of the poorer and worse 
provided among the crusaders, hundreds died on every 
day's march, of want and fatigue, of raging thirst or 
its fatal gratification ; war-horses, baggage-animals, and 
hounds and hawks — the indispensable incumbrances 
of a chivalric camp — perished alike from a scarcity of 
water; and of the splendid cavalry of the princes, 
nobles, and their followers, which on the field of Nice 



DEFEAT OF THE TURKS. 113 

had mustered one hundred thousand lances, nearly 
thirty thousand were dismounted before their arrival 
under the walls of Antioch. In a word, so completely 
exhausted and disorganized was the whole host before 
its approach to the Syrian frontiers that, in the tre- 
mendous pass of Mount Taurus, even a small band of 
resolute men might have successfully maintained the 
steep and narrow defile against the armed but feebled 
multitudes who, staggering under the oppression of toil, 
heat, and intolerable thirst, slowly wound in a length- 
ened and disorderly train through the mountain chain 
which here bars the southern route. But the panic- 
stricken Turks, in the precipitation of their flight, neg- 
lected the opportunity of defence; the crusading host 
was suffered, unassailed, to complete the most toilsome 
and dangerous portion of their march; and every na- 
tural obstacle of the country and the climate being gra- 
dually surmounted, their straggling divisions were safely 
reunited in the same encampment on the Syrian soil.* 
While the main army of the crusaders prepared 
to penetrate through the Tauridian pass, two 
bodies of their cavalry had been separately detached 
in advance under Tancred, and Baldwin, the bro- 
ther of Duke Godfrey, to explore the neighbouring 
regions, and make a diversion against the Turkish 
power. After both had wandered in some uncertainty 
among the mountains, the division of Tancred first 

* Albert, p. 215. Guibert, p. 495. Fulcber. Carnot. p. 389. Bal- 
dricus Arcb. p. 99. Willermus Tyr. p. 675. 



114 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

succeeded in effecting a passage, and continued its 
southern descent into the coasts of Cilicia. The 
young chieftains had already arrived before Tarsus, 
and granted a capitulation to the Turkish garrison, 
when the troops of Baldwin, who had reached the 
same vicinity by another route, unexpectedly made 
their appearance ; and the jealous artifice of their 
leader succeeded, b}' opening an intrigue with the 
infidel and Christian inhabitants, in obtaining pos- 
session of the city. The generous Italian, repressing 
his indignation, abandoned the place to his rival ; and, 
turning eastward, pursued a new course of enterprise 
with so much rapidity, that several important towns 
submitted to his arms. But his forbearing temper 
was outraged beyond endurance when he learned that, 
after his departure from Tarsus, the selfish refusal of 
Baldwin to receive a party of his followers within the 
protection of the walls, had exposed them to be mas- 
sacred b}^ the retreating infidels; and the Rhenish 
chieftain, leaving a garrison in Tarsus, no sooner came 
up with his division than Tancred, yielding to the 
natural impulse of resentment which he shared with 
his enraged soldiers, led them to a furious assault 
upon the forces of their treacherous confederate. 
After a bloody encounter, the Italians were repulsed 
by a superiority of numbers ; but feelings of mutual 
compunction at so irreligious a fued between brethren 
of the cross having succeeded to their first emotions 
of anger, an accommodation was effected ; and the 



DEFEAT OF THE TURKS. 115 

two detachments together rejoined the grand army 
before it reached the SjTian frontier.* 

This quarrel of Baldwin and Tancred had one im- 
portant consequence. The guilt of the original ag- 
gression lay so clearly with the former, that, when the 
circumstances of his conduct became known in the 
crusading camp, he justly incurred the execrations of 
the whole host; and respect for the virtues of his 
brother Godfrey alone saved him from condign punish- 
ment. A consciousness of the aversion in which he 
was held by his confederates, did not tend to lessen 
his selfish disregard for the general interests of the 
Crusade; and he gladly availed himself of the first 
advantageous opening to separate from the main army, 
and pursue an independent career of ambition. He 
learned that the Christian cities of Armenia and 
Mesopotamia endured with impatience the Mussulman 
3'oke ; that the Turkish garrisons were few and feeble; 
and that the inhabitants were ripe for revolt against 
their oppression. At the instance of a fugitive Arme- 
nian noble, and at the head of only two hundred of 
his own lances, and a more considerable body of in- 
fantry, he quitted the crusading camp, boldly directed 
his march eastward, and victoriously overran the 
whole country as far as the Euphrates. Encouraged 
by the sight of the banners of the cross, the Christian 
population everywhere rose in arms, opened the gates 

* Albert. Aquensis, p. 214-219. Radulphus Cadomensis, p. 297- 
301. Willermus Tyr. p. 677-680. 



116 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

of their cities on his approach, and assisted him in 
expelling the common infidel enemy. After a slight 
and ineffectual opposition, the Turkish Emirs either 
fled or submitted to his arms ; the fame of his suc- 
cessful exploits soon spread beyond the Euphrates; 
and the people of Edessa, the most considerable city 
of Mesopotamia, who, though still governed by a na- 
tive prince, had long groaned under the exactions of 
Turkish tribute, obliged their aged duke to implore 
his aid in delivering them from the infidels. Baldwin 
eagerly accepted the invitation ; he was received with 
enthusiasm by the Edessenes; and, though his dis- 
posable Latin forces were now reduced to eighty 
horse and a small band of foot, he was so vigorousl}' 
aided by these new allies, that he found no difficulty 
in establishing the independence of their state. The 
means by which he next possessed himself of its go- 
vernment are variously related ; but, under their most 
favourable construction, the event may justify the 
darkest suspicions of his guilty ambition. Excited 
by the dread that their deliverer would forsake them, 
the people of Edessa first compelled their duke to 
adopt'^" him as his son and successor ; and the old 
prince was then murdered in a popular insurrection. 

* For the particulars of the singular ceremony by which this adop- 
tion was declared, we are indebted to the lively narrative of Guibert. 
In full assembly of the people, Baldwin was first made to enter in a 
state of nudity under the same shirt with his new father, who then 
folded him to his breast and gave hiiii the filial kiss. He was next 
obliged to submit to precisely the same forms of adoption by the 





BALDWIN SEIZES EDESSA. 



SEIZURE OF EDESSA. 



117 



If Baldwin was really innocent of his death, he pro- 
fited not the less by the catastrophe. He received 
the ducal crown on the following day ; and thus be- 
came the founder of the first Latin principality in the 
East. Under his able and vigorous government, his 
new subjects soon discovered that they had chosen a 
severe and absolute master, as well as a formidable 
champion ; but he at least completed their emancipa- 
tion from the hated tyranny of the infidels ; extended 
the limits of their state by his conquests from the 
Turks of the intermediate territory between their 
city and Antioch ; and rendered the Principality of 
Edessa, by its position beyond the Euphrates, for 
above fifty years, one of the most important outworks 
of the Christian power in the East.* 

wife of the Duke of Edessa. Guibert, p. 496. It is supposed that 
the Emperor Alexius, in honouring the homage of Godfrey with the 
filial relation, had also received him between the shirt and the skin. 
But see Du Cange, Diss, sur Jolnville, xxii. 

* Fulcherius Carnotensis, p. 389, 390. Albert Aquensis, p. 220- 
222. Guibert, p. 496, 497. Willermus Tyr. p. 682, 683. 




118 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 




SECTION ^^n. 



SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF ANTIOCH BY THE CRUSADERS. 




TITLE Baldwin was engaged in 
establishing his power on the 
banks of the Euphrates, the main 
1 host of the Crusaders had ad- 
vanced to Antioch, and under- 
taken the siege of that ancient 
The city, which still presented the 
appearance of pristine grandeur, and contained a 
numerous Christian population, was possessed by 
Baghasian, a prince of Seljukian lineage ; whose power 
was maintained by a Turkish garrison of about ten 
thousand horse, and twice as many infantry, and 



capital of Syria. 



CAPTURE OF ANTIOGH. 119 

whose courage and energy were worthy of his station. 
After some brave but ineffectual efforts to impede the 
approach of the invaders, he retired within the walls; 
and the iron gates of the bridge over the Orontes, 
which commanded the access to the city from the 
north, having been forced by the advanced guard of 
the crusaders under the Duke of Normandy, their 
whole host passed the river, and overspread the ad- 
jacent plain. At this epoch, Antioch, occupying an 
irregular site of precipice and valley, was embraced 
within a circumference of about four miles, by a 
strong wall, which, wherever the natural obstacles of 
the ground did not afford a sufficient defence, rose to 
the height of sixty feet. Part of the circuit was 
covered by the river and a morass which received the 
torrents from the neighbouring hills, and the re- 
mainder by a deep and wide ditch. The formidable 
aspect of these works at first dispirited the leaders of 
the Crusade; the lateness of the season — for the 
summer and autumn had been already consumed in 
the passage of Asia Minor — was unfavourable for the 
commencement of an arduous siege; and a proposal 
to defer the enterprise until the return of spring was 
only rejected in their council through the energetic 
remonstrances of the Count of Thoulouse against the 
dangers of delay and inaction.* 

* Albert, p. 225, 226. Radulpb. Cad. p. 303. Raymond des 
Agiles, p. 142. Baldric. Arch. p. 101. Guibert, p. 498. Willer- 
mus Tyr. p. 684-689. 



120 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

As soon as the exhortations of that prince reno- 
vated the ardour of his confederates, the city was in- 
vested, and operations against it were commenced : 
but, of the five gates in its circumference, three only 
were blockaded ; and by some unexplained negligence 
or necessity, the communication of the garrison with 
the exterior country through the other two was left 
open. From these the resolute and active Baghasian 
harassed the rear of the besiegers with perpetual 
sallies, frequently cut off their supplies, and burned 
the materials which were with difhculty collected for 
their operations. The want of all warlike stores for 
the siege, the consequent tardiness of the approaches, 
and the unskilful attempts to which the crusaders 
were reduced, all betray the extent of their obliga- 
tions at the preceding siege of Nice to the aid of 
Alexius and his Greek engines and artificers. Their 
few battering and projectile machines were now used 
without effect ; and the single movable tower, which 
they were enabled to construct with assistance from 
some Italian vessels lately arrived on the coast, was 
no sooner advanced to the walls, than the Turks, 
suddenly issuing from one of the uninvested gates, set 
it on fire and reduced it to ashes. While this and 
other partial successes raised the courage of the gar- 
rison, and their intercourse with the country secured 
the constant renewal of their supplies, the besiegers 
themselves were beginning to suffer the most grievous 
distresses from want and disease. At first they had 



CAPTURE OF ANTIOCH. 121 

found abundant food in the fertile district which was 
commanded by their camp ; and their whole host had 
rioted in plenty : but the improvident waste and 
wanton destruction, both of provisions and forage, 
speedily exhausted the means of support in the 
vicinity; and when the approach of winter increased 
the difficulty and expense of transporting distant sup- 
plies, the more indigent of the crusading multitude 
fell a prey to all the horrors of ftimine. Even the 
rich were glad to purchase the most disgusting fare at 
exorbitant prices; and their horses were either 
starved or killed for food in so great numbers, that of 
the seventy thousand cavalry with which they com- 
menced the siege, before its third month was com- 
pleted not more than two thousand remained. The 
ravages of hunger were, as usual, followed by those 
of pestilence. The plain of Antioch was deluged 
with the wintry rains; and the putrifying effect of 
moisture in an Asiatic climate upon the filthy con- 
dition of the Christian camp, produced a contagious 
disease, which swept off thousands of its squalid 
population.* 

From this scene of accumulated misery, numbers 
of warriors of inferior rank fled to the establishments 
of Baldwin in Mesopotamia, and to the delivered 



* Robertus Monachus, p. 45, 46. Albert, p. 227-233. Radulph. 
Cad. p. 304, 305. Raymond des Agiles, p. 143-145. Baldric. 
Arch. p. 101, Fuleher. Carnot. p. 390. Guibert, p. 499, 500. 
Willermus Tyr. p. 690-693. 



122 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

Christian towns in Cilicia; but the shame of their 
desertion was exceeded by that of some of the leaders 
themselves. The Duke of Normandy having with- 
drawn to the coast, required several citations and a 
threat of excommunication to induce his return ; and 
the Count of Chartres, at a later period, under the ex- 
cuse of illness, confirmed the suspicion of his coward, 
ice by retiring from the camp with his division to 
Alexandretta. But the sacred cause w\as still more 
deeply disgraced by the flight of the valiant Viscount 
of Melun ;'•' together with the great fanatic Peter the 
Hermit, who, after exciting the warriors of Europe to 
devote themselves to the imaginary service of Heaven, 
was foremost in attempting to abscond from the pri- 
vations of the enterprise. The dangerous effect of 
this example w^as prevented by the activity of Tan- 
cred, who intercepted the escape both of the Hermit 
and his companion ; and their desertion w^as only 
pardoned in the council of the indignant princes, 
upon their swearing never to abandon tlie holy ex- 
pedition. The retreat of Taticius, the imperial 
lieutenant, w^ith the small body of Greek auxiliaries 
which he commanded, was permitted with mingled 
emotions of hope and contempt. He could scarcely 
obtain full credit for the assertion that his motive 

* This worthy was surnamed the Carpenter ; not because he 
followed that mechanical occupation ; but, as the chroniclers are 
careful to tell us, by reason of the weighty strokes with which his 
battle-axe Jiammercd the heads of his antagonists, llobcrt. p. 47. 
Guibert, p. 501. 



CAPTURE OF ANTIOCH. 123 

was to impress Alexius, by his personal influence, 
with the necessity of forwarding immediate supplies 
of provisions for the Syrian war, though he ofiered 
the pledge of his oath that he would himself return 
with the convoys ; but if the princes were not deluded 
by this shallow pretext, they prudently dissembled 
their suspicions, and dismissed him in peace.* 

With the return of spring the sufierings of the 
crusaders were in some degree mitigated by the 
arrival on the coast of supplies from Europe ; but the 
activity of the Turks in harassing their convoys was 
undiminished ; and the continued freedom of in- 
tercourse between the garrison of Antioch and their 
Syrian confederates, perpetually exposed the besiegers 
to desultory attacks in front and rear. On one 
occasion, early in February, an army of twenty thou- 
sand men, under the three emirs of Aleppo, CiBsarea, 
and Ems, was intercepted in an attempt to enter the 
city, and defeated with signal slaughter by Count 
Raymond and Boemond. But, in the following 
month, the same crusading leaders, while escorting a 



* Robert, p. 47, 48. Raymond, p. 146. Baldric, p. 103. 
Guibert, p. 501, 502. Willermus Tyr. p. 694. Anna Comnena, 
p. 252. The Grecian princess, indeed, refers the flight of Taticius 
to the arts of Boemond, who fearing interruption on the part of the 
imperial lieutenant in his scheme for acquiring the sovereignty of 
Antioch, terrified him into a belief that the Latin princes designed 
to massacre him and his troops on some suspicion that Alexius had 
betrayed them to the Turks. But all the Latin writers agree in 
giving the account copied in the text. 



124 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

supply of provisions and military stores from the 
coast, were suddenly assailed and routed by an am- 
buscade of the infidels. Godfrey, who had lately 
risen from a sick couch, was compelled to fly to their 
succour with the remains of the Latin chivalry; and 
the ever-enterprising Baghasian, seizing the occasion 
of this absence of the best troops of the crusaders 
from the beleaguer, made an impetuous sally from the 
walls, and forced the Christian Hues. The bravery 
and conduct of the Duke of Brabant were never more 
vigorously displayed than on this occasion. lie re- 
traced his march to the camp with so great celerity, 
and posted his forces with so much ability, as to 
intercept the retreat of Baghasian ; and a furious con- 
flict ensued under the walls of Antioch. The infidels 
fought with desperation, but their courage was une- 
qually opposed to the heroic sj)irit and sinewy force 
of the Christian knighthood, animated by the indi- 
vidual prowess of its leaders; among whom the two 
dukes, Godfrey, and Robert of Normandy, and the 
gallant Tancred, are recorded to have performed the 
most incredible feats of corporeal strength and valour.''' 

* Thus, we are gravely informed how Godfrey, with a single blow 
of his falchion, clave a Turk in twain from shoulder to hip. The 
upper half of the miscreant fell into the Orontcs ; the legs kept their 
scat, and were borne by their good steed into the city. Nor was 
this the only feat of the hero. At one stroke of his sword, he slit an 
infidel down from the top of the head to the saddle, and even cut 
through both that and the back-bone of the horse. Again, after the 
capture of Jerusalem, he satisfied the incredulity of a noble Saracen, 



J 



CAPTURE OF ANTIOCn. 125 

Of the infidels, a son of Baghasian, many other emirs, 
and two thousand warriors of inferior degree, fell in 
this sanguinary flight; of the Christians, not more 
than half that number were slain ; and encouraged by 
their victory, they formed and successfully accom- 
plished the design of barring the egress of the gar- 
rison from the two gates which had hitherto been left 
unblockaded, by the construction of a fortified mound 
or intrenchment opposite to each. Tancred and the 
Count of Thoulouse severally undertook the ho- 
nourable duty of guarding the new posts ; the gar- 
rison of Antioch was thenceforth effectually confined 
within the walls; the supplies of provisions which 
their brethren had hitherto introduced by these gates 
were cut off and diverted to the refreshment of the 
Latins; and the whole surrounding country being 

who had heard of his prowess, by sweeping of the head of a camel 
with his sword in a trice. The unbeliever still ascribing more virtue 
to the temper of the blade than to the strength of the arm which 
wielded it, Godfrey to convince him, borrowed his own weapon, and 
with that, in like manner, decapitated a second camel. These 
stories are not related by some one obscure fabler only, but are 
avouched, the first two with minute particularity, by the monk 
Robert, (p. -50,) and by Ralph of Caen, (p. 404 ;) and all confirmed 
by so dignified an authority as the Archbishop of Tyre, (p. 701, 770.) 
And Malmsbury, who made a careful collection of the feats of 
Godfrey, adds to the number (p. 448) the slaying of a lion in 
single combat near Antioch. The chroniclers are eager in ascribing 
to Godfrey as great a superiority in bodily strength as in intellectual 
virtues over the other chieftains of the war. But of some of these 
leaders, exploits scarcely less astounding are recorded. The Duke 
of Normandy, for instance, cut through the head and shoulders of a 



126 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

now in unmolested possession of the besiegers, abun- 
dance again reigned in their camp.* 

Still, little or no impression had been made upon the 
defences of the city ; seven months had already been 
ineffectually consumed in the siege; and the council 
of princes was disturbed by intelligence that the Sul- 
tan of Persia was collecting a large army for the relief 
of the garrison. At this dangerous crisis, the alliance 
of an apostate and a traitor served the cause of the cru- 
saders more beneficially than their arms. Among the 
Christian population of Antioch, was a man of noble 
birth, but unprincipled and sordid character, named 
Phirouz, who, abjuring his religion, had been received 
into the Turkish ranks, and intrusted with the com-' 
mand of three towers. Stimulated by avarice or dis- 
affection from the service which he had embraced, he 
opened a secret correspondence with Boemond ; and 
consented, on the promise of a large reward, to betray 
his post to the besiegers. The Norman made the use 
of this opening, which was to be expected from his 
selfish and intriguing spirit. He declared to the 
council of his compeers his possession of a plan for 
the surprise of the place ; but, before he would reveal 
its nature, claimed the principality of Antioch for 

Turk at a blow ; and Ralph of Caen was prevented from detailing 
the stupendous deeds of Tancred only by the silence which the 
modesty of that hero had imposed on his esfjuirc. 

* Robert, p. 49-53. Raymond, p. 147. Baldric. 104-107. 
Albert, p. 237-243. Guibert, p. 503-506. Willermus Tyr. p. 
695-703. 



CAPTURE OF ANTIOCH. 127 

himself as the just recompense of his successful merit. 
The ungenerous preference of his own interest to the 
common cause of the Crusade, which was apparent 
through this reservation, disgusted those among his 
confederates who were actuated by loftier motives of 
conduct ;* but it especially excited less dignified and 
splenetic feelings in the breast of the Count of Thou- 
louse, who entertained views similar to his own, and 
regarded his pretensions with the hatred of a rival. 
His stipulation was, therefore, at first indignantly re- 
jected ; but the increasing urgency of the danger with 
which the army was menaced by the approach of the 



* Even the good Godfrey himself, usually so ready to sacrifice his 
own interests and feelings to the advancement of the sacred cause, 
could not escape a collision with the selfish meanness of Boemond ; 
nor was his own magnanimity always proof against the sense of a 
petty injury. This is amusingly shown in a story related by Albert 
of Aix, (p. 242.) A superb Turkish pavilion, which the Prince of 
Edessa had captured and sent as a present to his brother Godfrey, was 
intercepted by an Armenian chieftain, and despatched as his own 
gift to Boemond. Godfrey, accompanied by his friend, the Count 
of Flanders, paid an angry visit to the quarters of Boemond to de- 
mand the restitution of the tent. The covetous Norman refused 
compliance; and Godfrey complained to the council of princes. 
Boemond was at last compelled to deliver up the disputed property ; 
but not before, as Mr. Mills has pithily observed, (^Ilist. of the Cru- 
sades, vol. i. 189,) a "piece of silk excited the passions of thou- 
sands of men who had despised all worldly regards, and had left 
Europe in order to die in Asia." The whole scene may recall to the 
reader's mind some of the squabbles of the Homeric heroes ; but the 
impatience of Godfrey in endangering the harmony of the camp for 
so frivolous a cause, is at variance with the dignified forbearance of 
his o-eneral conduct. 



128 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

Turkish succours, and the necessity of either ac- 
quiring possession of the city or of suspending the 
siege before their arrival, prevailed over the reluc- 
tance of the council to comply with the extortionate 
demand. The Count of Thoulouse was compelled by 
his brother chieftains to stifle his jealousy and aban- 
don his opposition ; and Boemond received the solemn 
pledge of all the princes that, if Antioch were gained 
by his means, he should be invested with its sove- 
reignty.* 

Upon this promise, the crafty Norman disclosed his 
project, and prepared its accomplishment. In the 
dead of night, he led his own troops to the base of the 
towers, where Phirouz held his watch ; by the traitor 
and some associates of his plot, rope-ladders were 
lowered ; and the future Prince of Antioch, to encou- 
rage his wavering followers, was himself the first man 
who ascended the walls. The escalade was effected 
in safety ; the Turkish guards of several neighbouring 
towers were slain before they could give the alarm ; 
and the gates of the city were opened to the whole 
crusading host. A horrid and indiscriminate slaugh- 
ter of the infidel garrison and the Christian inhabit- 
ants ensued ; until the crusaders had exhausted the 
first burst of savage fury, roused by the remembrance 
of their own sufferings in the siege, and the obstinacy 

* Robert, p. 54. Albert, p. 244. Radulph. p. 308, 309. Bal- 
dric, p. 108, 109. Guibcrt, p. 509, 510. Willermus Tyr. p. 704- 
707. 







i i .'41': 



il 
I' 



'^m.. 



«!^i;i' 



CAPTURE OF ANTIOCH. 129 

of the lengthened defence. [3d of June, 1098.] The 
remains of the Christian population were then pro- 
tected from further outrage ; but the massacre of the 
Turks was still pursued with relentless vengeance; 
and the fugitives who escaped beyond the walls were 
immediately intercepted and slaughtered by the Latin 
detachments and Syrian Christians who held the sur- 
rounding plains. Such was the fate of the gallant ve- 
teran Baghasian himself; but numbers of the garrison 
effected their retreat into the citadel ; and, closing 
its gates before the victors bethought themselves of 
completing their success, the refugees there despe- 
rately maintained a protracted resistance.''' 

* Robert, p. 55. Albert, p. 245-247. Radulph. p. 308, 309. 
Baldric. 109-112. Guibert, p. 511. Willermus Tyv. p. 708-712. 




Robert of Norma7idy sirying the Turk. 



130 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 




SECTIOX IX. 



DEFENCE OF AXTIOCII BY THE CRUSADERS. 



HE divided state of the Moham- 
medan world had hitherto fa- 
voured the progress of the Cru- 
^ sade. The dismemberment of 
the dominions of Malek Shah 
had fatally weakened the gene- 
ral power of the Turkish Em- 
pire. The monarchs of Persia 
remained the nominal chiefs of 
the Seljukian race ; but the 
Sultan of Roum had been unassisted in his struggle 
to arrest the invasion of the Latins by any succour 
from that kindred dynasty; the numerous emirs of 
Syria, Armenia, and Mesopotamia were disunited 




DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 131 

among themselves, and agreed only in the effort to 
throw off their dependence on the court of Ispahan ; 
and the Fatimite or Ommiadan princes of Egypt were 
the natural enemies of the whole Turkish nation, as 
the disciples, protectors, and tyrants of their fallen 
rivals, the Ahassidan Khalifs of Bagdad. Before the 
arrival of the crusaders in Asia, the Khalif of Egypt, 
availing himself of the distractions of the Seljukian 
Empire to recover the ancient possessions of his house, 
had already despatched an army into Palestine, and 
succeeded in wresting Jerusalem itself and other places 
from their Turkish conquerors.* When, therefore, 
the strange rumour reached Cairo of the Christian 
invasion of Asia, the overthrow of the Sultan of 
Roum, and the advance of the crusading myriads into 
Syria, the khalif endeavoured, by sending an embassy 
to their camp before Antioch, to discover their further 
designs, to ascertain their force, and, perhaps, to culti- 
vate their alliance against a common enemy. It is 
not improbable that the news of their previous suc- 
cesses, as tending to precipitate the fall of the Turkish 
power, was grateful to the Egyptian Prince ; and he 
is said, by one authority, to have encouraged their 
prosecution of the siege of Antioch, and even to have 
offered his co-operation. His envoys also expressed 
his readiness to admit the Christian pilgrims to wor- 
ship in peace at Jerusalem; but this proposal was 

* De Guignes, vol. i. 249. 



132 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

liaughtily rejected by the leaders of the Crusade, who 
replied that the Holy Sepulchre was the lawful heri- 
tage of Christendom alone, and declared their resolu- 
tion, by the divine aid, to recover and preserve it from 
further profanation by infidels of whatever race. So 
bold and unreserved an avowal of their hostile pur- 
pose was not calculated to secure the friendship or to 
allay the jealousy of the khalif. The negotiations 
which he had opened were not, indeed, broken off, 
and he accepted an embassy from the crusaders ; but 
his conduct in the vicissitudes of the siege alternately 
betrayed his enmity and his fears. When he heard 
of the destruction with which the besiegers were 
threatened by famine and pestilence, he imj)risoned 
their envoys : when their princes despatched the 
heads of the slaughtered Turkish emirs to Cairo as 
the trophies of victory, he released the ambassadors 
and loaded them with presents for the principal lead- 
ers of the Crusade.* 

The report of the danger of Antioch was received 
with other emotions by the Sultan of Persia; and the 
alarming progress of the Christian arms had the effect 
of exciting the Turkish states into a transient union 
against the invaders. From the banks of the Eu- 
phrates and the Tigris, twenty-eight powerful emirs 
with their swarms of cavalry obeyed the summons 
of the sultan to range themselves under the standard 



* Robert, p. 49-52. Albert, p. 236-237. Raymond, p. 146. 

Willcnnus Tyr. p. 69G. 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 133 

of their prophet, and to avenge the cause of their 
faith and nation. The supreme command was as- 
signed to Kerboga, Prince of Mosul on the Tigris, as 
the lieutenant of the Persian monarch ; he was joined 
by Kilidge Arslan, the Sultan of Roum, with the 
remains of his forces ; and the whole host, which some 
of the Latin writers are contented to describe as in- 
numerable,* is estimated by others at two, three, or 
even four hundred thousand cavalry .f The first ope- 
rations of this overwhelming multitude were directed 
against the new Christian Principality beyond the 
Euphrates; but the undaunted heroism with which 
Baldwin defended his capital, delayed their advance 
until the fall of Antioch; and the startling intelli- 
gence of that disastrous event roused Kerboga to 
break up from the unsuccessful siege of Edessa, and 
hasten his march to the relief of the Syrian citadel. | 

On the approach of his host toward Antioch, the 
leaders of the Crusade withdrew their diminished 
forces within the defences of the city; and the Turk- 
ish cavalry, filling all the surrounding plains, re- 
inforced the garrison of the citadel, enclosed the 
Latins in their position, and cut ofi" all their com- 
munications with the sea-coast and exterior country. 



* Robert, p. 56. Fulcher. p. 392. Guibert, p. 512. Willer- 
mus Tyr. p. 714. 

f Albert, p. 242, and Radulphus, p. 319, give the lowest and 
highest estimate in the text. 

I Albert, p. 243. Baldric, p. 112. Guibert, p. 502. 



134 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

By these measures, the crusaders, now besieged in 
their turn, were immediately subjected to a second 
and far more grievous fomine than that which they 
had endured in the preceding winter. A repetition 
of the same narrative of distress, with many aggra- 
vated horrors, would be equally revolting and pro- 
fitless; and the reader will gladly be spared the 
shocking and loathsome details of misery which re- 
duced a famishing host to satiate the cravings of 
hunger with leaves and weeds, with the hides of 
animals, and the old leather of belts and harness, to 
devour greedily the vilest offal of slaughter-houses 
and sewers, and even to prey upon human flesh. 
For five and twenty days, the ravening and perishing 
multitudes suffered every frightful extremity of want 
which language may paint, or imagination conceive ; 
the princely, the noble, and the fair were exposed to 
privations only less horrid in their intensity than 
those of the inferior herd of soldiery and camp 
followers ; and the whole host was stricken with one 
universal sentiment, of weakness and despondency. 
Desertions again became numerous; and the fugitives, 
who, letting themselves down by ropes at night from 
the walls, were fortunate enough to escape the cime- 
ters of the Turks, spread their dismal tale of the 
impending ruin of the crusading cause throughout the 
few Christian establishments on the sea-coasts and in 
the interior, in which they could find refuge. Among 
these apostates to their vows were many persons of 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCII. 135 

distinction, including that Lord of Melun, William 
the Carpenter, who had lately so publicly renewed his 
devotional oaths; and the numerous companions of 
his shame are consigned to indignant oblivion by one 
historian, only under the conviction that their un- 
worthy names were eternally blotted from the Book 
of Life.* 

The conduct of the fugitives was, indeed, calculated 
to extinguish the faint gleam of hope which the cru- 
saders might have felt in the knowledge that the 
Byzantine emperor was now on his march with a 
large army through Asia Minor to support their ope- 
rations, and claim the paramount sovereignty of their 
conquests. The pusillanimous Count of Chartres, 
who had hitherto lingered at Alexandretta, was so 
terrified by the wretched aspect and more deplorable 
report of the deserters who had reached his quarters, 
that he immediately continued his retreat ; and meet- 
ing Alexius in Phrygia, communicated the panic to 
that monarch. Though the emperor had been joined, 
in addition to his own forces, by numerous squadrons 
of fresh crusaders from Europe, who were still eager to 
advance to the relief of their confederates at Antioch, 
the suggestions of his selfish policy, or the baser 
influence of fear, made him resolve not to risk his 
resources or the safety of his person for the deliver- 

* Robert, p. 57-59. Albert, p. 248-251. Raymond, p. 153. 
Baldric, p. 113-117. Guibert, p. 512-517. Willermus Tyr. p. 
714-717. 



13G THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

ance of his Latin allies ; and, abandoning them to 
their fate, in des^^ite of the remonstrances and re- 
proaches of their countrymen in his camp, he enforced 
a general retreat upon Constantinople.'-' The evil 
tidings of his retrogade movement were not slow in 
reaching the crusaders at Antioch ; and the first burst 
of fury at his treacherous or cowardly desertion of his 
engagements was succeeded by a general apathy of 
hopeless resignation or sullen despair. Neither the 
dread of the enemy, nor the threat of punishment, 
could rouse the soldiery to the requisite exertions for 
the common defence; they shut themselves up in 
gloomy expectation of death; and in one quarter of 
Antioch it was necessary to fire the houses over their 
heads before they could be driven out to man the 
ramparts.f 

Amid this prostration of mental and corporeal 
energies, which levelled the proud distinctions of 
spirit between the gallant chivahy^ and the meaner 
multitude of the crusading host, the names of five 
only of the leaders of the war deserved the honour- 
able record of its chroniclers, by their unshaken con- 
stancy and courage: Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond 
of Thoulouse, the Papal Legate Adhemar of Puy, 
Boemond and Tancred. The fortitude of Godfrey 
was sustained by the purest strength of a religious 

* Robert, p. 60. Albert, p. 253. Baldric, p. 119. Anna Com- 
ncna, p. 255-257. Willermus Tyr. p. 718-720. 

t Albert, p. 253. Guibcrt, p. 517. Willermu,s Tyr. p. 720. 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 137 

mind; that of the count and bishop might be inspired 
bj the fiercer confidence of fanatical zeal ; the vault- 
ing ambition and cupidity of Boemond were inex- 
tinguishable save with life ; and in the generous soul 
of Tancred, the love of glory still shone through the 
darkest adversity with a steady and unfading light. 
But the example, the exhortations, and the valorous 
resolves of these master-spirits of their cause, would 
have proved alike ineffectual to reanimate the hopes 
and efforts of their desponding confederates and fol- 
lowers, if they had not invoked the all-powerful aid 
of superstition. When every prospect of earthly 
succour had vanished, it required the belief of a 
special interposition of Heaven in their behalf to re- 
kindle the expiring fanaticism of the multitude ; and 
the character of the Count of Thoulouse, as well as 
his share in promoting the popular delusion, may in- 
differently justify the presumption that he was the 
original mover, or the willing dupe of a pretended 
revelation. 

In the Provencal division of the crusaders, was a 
priest of Marseilles, Peter Barthelemy by name, who, 
presenting himself before the council of princes, de- 
clared how St. Andrew had shown him in a vision, 
that the steel head of the very lance which had 
pierced the side of the crucified Redeemer might be 
found buried beneath the high altar in the Church of 
St. Peter at Antioch; that the Count of Thoulouse 
was appointed to bear the sacred weapon against the 



138 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

infidel enemy ; and that its mystic presence in the 
battle should penetrate the hearts of the unbelievers, 
and insure a complete victory to the people of God. 
The minds of the crusaders had been prepared for the 
reception of this tale, and, perhaps, the expedient 
itself had been suggested by rumours of several pre- 
vious apparitions of the saints both to clerical and lay 
individuals in the army, all leading to the expectation 
that some visible act of Almighty favour for their 
deliverance was at hand. If the Count of Thoulouse 
was not privy to the original imposture, he, at least, 
eagerly lent his countenance to its success ; the policy 
or conviction of the other chiefs gladly accepted the 
tale; and Raymond himself, with his chaplain and ten 
select companions, were appointed to search for the 
sacred relic. Two days of solemn preparation were 
spent by the whole army in religious exercises ; and 
early on the third the princes, attended by the clergy 
and lay multitude, went in procession to the Church 
of St. Peter. The doors were closed against the im- 
patient crowd ; and relays of workmen dug until 
nightfall to the depth of twelve feet under the high 
altar, without discovering the promised instrument of 
victory. But, as soon as the increasing darkness 
favoured the deception, Peter Barthelemy himself 
descended into the pit, and, after a plausible delay, 
exclaimed that he had found the precious object of 
their search. The steel head of a lance was then 
brought up from the excavation, and reverently dis- 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 139 

played in a web of cloth of gold to the enraptured 
gaze of the multitude. All previous incredulity was 
drowned in a general burst of superstitious enthusi- 
asm ; and the devout and firm assurance of approach- 
ing victory succeeded with wonderful rapidity to the 
abject despair with which the starving host had pre- 
viously been overwhelmed.* 

The first measure by which the leaders of the Cru- 
sade showed the sincerity of their renovated hopes, 
affords a curious picture of fanatical confidence. It 
was charitably resolved to offer the infidels one op- 
portunity of escape from the destruction to which 
they were otherwise doomed, in the alternative of 
withdrawing altogether from the sacred land of Syria, 
or declaring their conversion to the Christian faith. 
The ambassador selected to convey these proposals to 
the camp of Kerboga was Peter the Hermit ; and the 
astonishment, rage, arid contempt which their nature 
provoked, were, if possible, increased by the arrogant 
deportment and language of the fanatic. The ebulli- 
tion of furious indignation which prompted the reply 
of the Emir will excite less of our surprise than the 
forbearance which enabled a Turkish barbarian to 
respect the character of an ambassador, and to dismiss 
in safety the bearer of a message so insulting to his 
pride and faith. The defiance of the Christians was 

* Robert, p. 60-62. Albert, p. 253, 254. Raymond, p. 150, 
151. Radulphus, p. 316, 317. Baldric, p. 119. Fulcher. p. 391- 
393. Guibert, p. 517-520. Willermus Tyr. p. 721. 



140 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

hurled back upon them ; and the Hermit was fiercely 
admonished that there remained for them the choice 
only between submission to the law of Mohammed, 
or servitude and death.''' 

On this reply, the crusaders entertained no further 
doubt that the vengeance of Heaven had delivered 
the whole obstinate host of the infidels into their 
hands. But the Latin chieftains, with that admixture 
of politic wisdom which generally tempered their 
fanaticism, spared no exertion to excite the religious 
ardour, and refresh the physical strength of their fol- 
lowers for the approaching combat. The horses of 
their cavalry, now reduced from seventy thousand to 
no more than two hundred in number, were carefully 
fed on the last remains of their provender ; the lead- 
ers and soldiery freely shared with each other their 
last meal ; their rusted arms were whetted anew with 
grim desperation ; and the whole army betook them- 
selves to prayer, made confession of their sins, and 
received the absolution of the sacrament. Thus 
nerved in body and mind, the host was arrayed, in 
honour of the apostolic number, in twelve divisions ; 
the dawn of the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul was 
chosen for the reopening of the gates of Antioch; and, 
preceded by a body of the clergy chanting a psalm, 
the army issued from the city and formed in order of 
battle on the plain. 

* Robert, p. G2. Guibert, p. 520. Willermus Tyr. p. 722. 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 141 

Adhemar, the Bishop of Puj, headed the fourth 
division, the most honourable, because it carried the 
holy lance. He walked at its head, clothed in the 
robes of a pontiff, and surrounded by the symbols of 
religion and war. The venerable prelate, pausing 
before the bridge of the Orontes, addressed a pathetic 
discourse to the soldiers of the cross, blessing them, 
and promised the succour and recompense of Heaven. 
All the army shouted their approbation and assent. 

It is singular that the Count of Thoulouse, the des- 
tined bearer of the holy lance, was left within the 
walls with a detachment of the Provengals to watch 
the citadel ; but his place was supplied by the martial 
Legate who, in complete armour, bore aloft the sacred 
weapon at the head of one division ; and accompanied 
its display to the eyes of the whole host with the 
thrilling exhortation to fight that day as became the 
chosen champions of Heaven. Of the other eleven 
divisions, one, the vanguard, was led by the Count of 
Vermandois, as bearer of the papal standard; nine 
respectively by Godfrey, the two Roberts, Tancred, 
and the other chieftains of renown ; and the reserve 
was intrusted to Boemond. 

The distress and consequent weakness of the Chris- 
tians had been so well known in the Turkish camp, 
that Kerboga, notwithstanding their late haughty em- 
bassy, was lulled into a delusive security that their 
necessities must compel them to a speedy submission ; 
and he was so little prepared for their assault, that 



142 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

the foremost corps of his army was cut to pieces before 
the main body could hasten to support it. But as 
soon as the Turks recovered from their consternation, 
they fell impetuously upon the advancing line of 
Christians; and the brave Sultan of Nice, wheeling 
round his flank, gained the rear of the reserve under 
Boemond, and began to inflict a bloody vengeance for 
the rout of DoryUvum. Thus enveloped in a cloud of 
Tartar cavalry, the extrication of the crusading army 
from imminent peril is, as usual, marvellously referred 
to the personal prowess of its chiefs; and eulogies of 
their valour supply the place of more intelligible 
details. In the confused pictures of the chroniclers, 
and perhaps in the disorderly tactics of the age, it is 
a hopeless attempt to follow the fluctuating tide of 
battle, or discern the real causes of victory. Yet, 
with every allowance for stupendous deeds of heroism 
in the Europeans, and enormous exaggeration in the 
reported numbers of the Asiatics, for the desperation 
of one army and the surprise of the other, the asto- 
nishing issue of the struggle can only be explained by 
the supposition of some gross misconduct or fatal dis- 
sension among the Moslem leaders. If we are to 
believe the narrative of their own chroniclers, two 
hundred Latin horsemen, supported by the unwieldy 
array of dismounted knights and men-at-arms, charged, 
routed, and put to flight the myriads of Turkish 
cavalry; the pursuit was as sanguinary as the combat 
had been obstinate; and the whole immense host. 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 143 

which had been permitted for twenty-five days to hold 
the crusaders besieged in famine and despair within the 
walls of Antioch, was suddenly destroyed or dissipated 
in a single morning. While the victory yet hung in 
suspense, the fanatical ardour of the crusaders was 
assisted by a new accident or stratagem. Several 
figures of horsemen in bright armour became visible 
on the adjacent hills; and the papal legate pointing 
them out as the holy martyrs St. George, St. Maurice, 
and St. Theodore, bade the army, with a loud voice, 
behold the promised succour of Heaven. Responsive 
shouts of " It is the will of God," burst from the cru- 
sading ranks ; and the last triumphant charge was in- 
spired by the imaginary presence and aid of these ce- 
lestial champions.* 

* Robert, p. 63-66. Albert, p. 254-258. Raymond, p. 154, 155. 
Baldric, p. 120-122. Fulcber. p. 393-395. Guibert, p. 520-523. 
Willermus Tyr. p. 723-726. 

A belief in tbe reality of the apparition and aid of the three celes- 
tial warriors seems to have been universal among the crusaders. But 
their credulity with regard to the discovery of the holy lance was less 
general or lasting. The archbishops Baldric and William of Tyre, 
indeed, with several of the other chroniclers, betray no distrust of 
the genuineness both of the vision and the relic; but political jealousy 
overcame the superstition, and sharpened the intellect of some of the 
princes and their adherents; and while Raymond des Agiles, the 
chaplain of the Count of Thoulouse, is loud in maintaining the authen- 
ticity of a miracle of which his patron was the appointed instrument, 
Ralph of Caen, in the opposite interest of Tancred and Boemond, 
boldly exposes the fraud. Fulk of Chartres also evinces more than 
one suspicion of the imposture. The sequel of the history is curious. 
After the victory of Antioch, the efforts of the Count of Thoulouse 



144 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

The defeat and dispersion of the host of Kerboga 
was immediately followed by the capitulation of the 
citadel of Antioch. By the recovered command of the 
surrounding territory, the crusaders were enabled for a 
time to relieve their wants with plentiful supplies of 
provisions; and the captured horses of the Turks 
served to remount the cavalry of the victors. The 
general joy was interrupted only by the obstinate 
ambition and quarrelsome temper of the Count of 
Thoulouse, who, still prosecuting his rivalry against 
the stipulated claims of Boemond to the sovereignty 
of Antioch, availed himself of the absence of that 
prince, and the duty with which he had been intrusted 
of watching the citadel, to hoist his own standard on 
the walls. He was again compelled by the other 
confederate chieftains to forego his pretensions ; and 
Boemond was formally installed in his new princi- 
pality : but the rankling jealousy of the Provengal 
continued not the less to disturb the harmony of the 
common cause, and to embarrass the ulterior operations 



and his Provencals to perpetuate a delusion which conferred a sort 
of spiritual superiority upon the chosen guardians of the sacred lance, 
provoked the envious rivalry of Boemond and his friends to proclaim 
their disbelief. The example of their skepticism shook the faith of 
the whole army ; and to maintain the truth of the revelation, Peter 
Bartheleiny, as its original publisher, was rashly induced to appeal 
to the judgment of Heaven by the fiery ordeal. Two burning piles 
being prepared with a narrow path between them, the wretched im- 
postor, or fanatic, rushed through the flames, and was so dreadfully 
burned on his passage that he expired on the next day. 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 145 

of the Crusade. In the council of princes, discord, 
desertion, and the selfish pursuit of private interests, 
now succeeded to the unity of purpose, which was 
originally produced by devotional feelings, and had 
been supported by the pressure of imminent danger. 
The resentment which the crusaders cherished toward 
the Greek Emperor for his failure of succour in their 
hour of need, was vented in an embassy of remonstrance 
and reproach ; and the great Count of Verm and ois 
being selected for this mission, took advantage of the 
opportunity, on his arrival at Constantinople, to escape 
the further perils and privations of the Crusade by 
returning to France.''' Baldwin and Boemond were 
wholly engrossed in securing the establishment and 
extension of their new states of Edessa and Antioch : 
the envious ambition of the Count of Thoulouse led 
him to imitate their example by undertaking the 
abortive conquest of some Syrian towns ; the death of 
the papal legate, Adhemar, shortly deprived the cru- 
sading cause of one of its most popular and zealous 
supporters, and most skilful and politic counsellors; 
and even the pious Godfrey himself suffered his ardour 
for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre to be sus- 

* It is a remarkable proof of tlie disgrace whicli, in the chivalrie 
ideas of the age, attended such an abandonment of the cnasading 
vow, that both the Counts of Vermandois and Chartres found in 
their high rank no exemption from contempt and obloquy ; and to re- 
deem their fame they were compelled to undertake a second expedi- 
tion to Palestine, in which, as we shall hereafter observe, they were 
both slain. 

10 



146 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

pended by the temptation of gratifying his troops with 
the more accessible spoils of adjacent districts/-' 

The delays thus generated by disunion and di- 
versity of objects among the leaders of the Crusade 
were not without some plausible pretexts : such as 
the necessity of reposing and refreshing the army 
after the fatigues and distresses of the siege at 
Antioch; the difficulty of advancing to Jerusalem 
through the intervening desert during the drought of 
a Syrian summer; and the prudence of consolidating 
the dominion which had already been won, that the 
arduous conquest of the Holy City itself might be the 
more surely effected. But the losses and calamities 
which flowed from division and inaction, far out- 
weighed any attendant advantages. Numbers of the 
bravest knights and best soldiers were seduced from 
the general service of the Crusade by the prospect of 
a profitable establishment in the new Christian States; 
many gallant lives were consumed in the profitless or 
unsuccessful assaults of detached corps upon the 
Turkish garrisons; and the usual improvidence of the 
crusaders occasioned a third famine and consequent 
pestilence, the combined effects of which were so ter- 
rific that no fewer than one hundred thousand persons 
are declared to have perished.''' 

♦Albert, p. 2G0-2G3. Baldric, p. 122, 123. Fulchcr. p. 394, 395. 
Guibert, p. 525. Willermus Tyr. p. 729-732. 

fThe practices to which the multitude were driven by hunger are 
almost too horrible for belief; yet the evidence afforded by chroniclers 
contemporary with, and many of them eye-witnesses to the circum- 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 147 

The ravages of this plague were assisted by the 
previous excesses in which the whole host had in- 
dulged since the victory of Antioch; and in the 
pages of their chroniclers charges of universal intem- 
perance and debauchery are intermingled with the 
dreadful picture of their distress. Nor can the feel- 
ing be condemned as an irrational superstition which 
ascribed the calamities of the crusaders to the anger 
of offended Heaven ; for, of all the miseries which they 
endured throughout the war, the greater portion were 
only the faithful consequences of their crimes; and 
the union of fanaticism and profligacy in men who 
believed themselves the chosen champions of a sacred 
cause is among the most sacred objects of contempla- 
tion in the spirit of the times. At the outset of their 
enterprise, while the sense of pious duty was fresh and 

stances, so unanimously attests the prevalence of cannibalism througli- 
out the first Crusade, as to make it impossible to doubt the fact. This 
loathsome indulgence of hunger was sometimes associated with that 
of an avarice almost equally disgusting. We are told that the Turks 
on the eve of battle were used to swallow their money, and that the 
human savages into whose hands they fell often ripped open the 
bodies of the slain, or of murdered captives, to search for gold, and 
afterward devoured their flesh. The cannibalism of the Crusaders 
was not confined to one season of distress, but had become familiar 
to the rabble of the camp, and reached its height during the third 
famine of Antioch, when in their desultory attacks upon the Turkish 
garrisons, they regularly ate the dead bodies of the infidels, and even 
of their own slain companions. See Robert, p. 69, 70 ; Radulphus, 
p. 315. Baldric, p. 125, and Albert, p. 267, 268 : the first three 
of whom record these brutalities with horror, and the last with 
indifference. 



148 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

uncorrupted, the morals of the crusaders ■were com- 
paratively pure; and, during the siege of Nice, the 
same authorities which are loudest in reprobating the 
subsequent disorders of the host, bear testimony to the 
prevalence of virtue and decorum in their camp. 
The leaders of the war, in general, presented an 
edifying spectacle of humility and fraternal concord ; 
the obedient soldiery, emulating their example, were 
sober, chaste, and vigilant; and from the proudest 
chieftain to the lowest warrior, all shared alike with 
undistinguishable zeal and devotion in the labours, 
privations, watches, and perils of the siege. Tliese 
sentiments of mutual charity and forbearance did not, 
indeed, extend to their common enemies; for their 
fanaticism was fierce and cruel; and mercy to the 
heathen was an article excluded from their mistaken 
creed. But among themselves they dwelt in Chris- 
tian brotherhood, and their conduct was such as 
became warriors who had devoted their lives to the 
service of God, and patiently expected the crown of 
martyrdom which they as firmly believed would be 
the reward of the slain.''' But both the license and 
the sufferings of the march through Asia Minor first 
tended to relax the bonds of this voluntary discipline ; 
and the previous self-denial of all ranks degenerated, 
under the hardening effects of want and danger, into 
rapacious and selfish brutality. The transition from 

* See particularly the two Archbishops, Baldric, p. 95 ; and Wil- 
liam of Tyre, p. GG7-G72, &c. 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 149 

scarcity to luxurious abundance on the arrival of the 
army before Antioch ; the enervating influence of the 
Syrian climate ; the absence of any unity of command 
or disciplined restraints over a host composed of va- 
rious and independent nations ; and the temptations 
offered by a rich and fertile district to the riotous in- 
dulgence of every sensual passion ; all assisted in pro- 
ducing a general corruption of morals. Among great 
masses of men, the alliance of misery and vice is pro- 
verbial ; and the subsequent calamities of famine and 
pestilence gave a frightful completion to the public 
iniquity. In the hourly contemplation of death, and 
in the extremity of despair, the multitude, so far from 
being awed into virtue, became utterly deaf to the 
voice of religion and conscience; every divine and 
human law was disregarded and violated ; the reli- 
gious exhortations of the clergy,"^' and the authority of 
the princes, were equally despised ; and the most 
licentious and enormous crimes were openly perpe- 
trated. The only hold which their spiritual and tem- 
poral rulers could exercise over the minds of the 
multitude was through their gross and extravagant 

* As long as ecclesiastical discipline was preserved by the author- 
ity of the Legate Adhemar, whose virtues are extolled by all the 
chroniclers, and whose death, in the third pestilence of Antioch, was 
lamented by the whole army, the clergy set an edifying example of 
pious resignation and morality ; but the Archbishop of Tyre acknow- 
ledges (p. 763) that, after the loss of their spiritual chief, their con- 
duct in general relaxed into indifference and dissoluteness, and that 
they became, with some bright exceptions, as vicious as the people. 



150 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

superstition ; and if pretended revelation were success- 
fully employed to animate the fanatical courage of the 
soldiery, or served to excite a transient ebullition of 
remorse,* denunciations of the heavenly wrath al- 
ways failed to correct the public depravity, and truth 
and imposture were equally powerless in efiecting any 
permanent reformation of manners in the crusading 
camp.f 

* Among other things, a monk was assured in a vision that the 
anger of God was speciall}'^ kindled against the crusaders, because 
Paynim women were the partners of their amours ; and the fair infi- 
dels were accordingly for a time sent away from the camp. The 
good Adhemar went further on another occasion : he considered that 
he was procuring an acceptable sacrifice to Heaven by obliging the 
warriors to separate not only from the paramours, but from their 
wives ; and all the women, virtuous as well as vicious, were confined 
in a remote quarter of the camp. Albert, p. 234. Willermus, Tyr. 
p. 695. 

f The dissoluteness of the crusading army before Antioch would 
surpass belief were it not confirmed by unquestionable testimony. 
Gibbon has dwelt upon it in his own peculiar way, (xi. 68,) and has 
transferred to a foot-note an allusion to the " tragic and scandalous 
fate of an archdeacon of royal birth, who was slain by the Turks as 
ho reposed in an orchard playing at dice with a Syrian concubine." 
The unfortunate ecclesiastic, who thus suffered himself to be seduced 
from his vow, and who paid with his life the penalty of his folly, was 
Alberon, Archdeacon of Metz, son of Conrad, Count of Lunenbourg, 
and a relation of the Emperor of Germany. The story is told by 
Albertus Aqucnsis, i. e. Albert of Aix, in Provence, a canon of the 
church, and who, though not a crusader himself, derived his informa- 
tion from trustworthy sources. He calls the fair partner of Alberon 
matrona, — whence we may infer that she was a married woman, and 
a person of condition. According to him, her fate was horrible. 
See upon this subject generally, Mailly, L' Eqjrit Dcs Croisades, iv. 
101; and Michaud, Ilistory of the Crusades, i. 131. 



DEFENCE OF ANTIOCH. 151 

Amidst all the demoralization of the multitude, no 
decay of fanatical zeal in pursuing the great ultimate 
object of the war is justly chargeable upon them. 
They, indeed, were ever clamorous against the delays 
which the caution, the declining ardour, or the private 
views of their leaders, opposed to their impatience. 
After the first burst of enthusiasm had expended itself 
in the sieges of Nice and Antioch, the latter, with the 
exception, perhaps, of the single-minded Godfrey, the 
gallant and disinterested Tancred, and a few congenial 
spirits, evinced more desire to indulge their love of 
pleasure and rapine, their mutual enmities and per- 
sonal ambition, than to complete the purpose of the 
Crusade. But the people discovered and regarded 
their selfishness with indignation and disgust ; and 
the soldiery and pilgrims who had survived the third 
famine and pestilence of Antioch, were loud in their 
demands to be led without further loss of time to the 
conquest of Jerusalem. The popular discontent at the 
continued procrastination of the enterprise was shortly 
displayed in a temper which it was no longer safe to 
provoke. The ramparts of the city of Marra, which, 
together with the Albara on the Orontes, the Count 
of Thoulouse had captured and intended to retain, 
were razed to the ground by his own troops, that the 
place might not, like the possession of Antioch itself, 
be rendered an object of contention to the chiefs, and 
of delay to the army. Raymond, finding his prize 
untenable, was compelled to yield to the wishes of his 



152 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

Provencal followers, and declared his readiness to lead 
them to the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre ; the 
same tardy resolution was embraced by the other 
princes ; and not until eight months had expired 
since the final reduction of Antioch, were the cru- 
sading forces once more concentrated, and put in 
combined motion toward Jerusalem.* 

* Robert. Mon. p. 69, 70. Albert, p. 267, 268. rtaymond des 
Agiles, p. 160-164. Baldric, p. 125, 126. Guibert. p. 525-527. 
Willcrmus Tjt. p. 731-736. 




CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 



153 




Jerusalem. 



SECTION X. 



SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM BY THE CRUSADERS. 




F the immense host, perhaps 
seven hundred thousand men, 
which had originally formed the 
siege of Nice, [a. d. 1099,] so 
enormous had been the losses 
by the sword and the climate, 
by fjimine and pestilence, deser- 
tion and conquest, that the total 
force which advanced from An- 
tioch amounted to only fifteen 
hundred cavalry and tv^enty 



154 THE FIRST CKUSADE. 

thousand foot soldiers, with about an equal number of 
unarmed pilgrims and camp followers. But this rem- 
nant of the myriads who had assumed the cross was 
composed of veteran and devoted warriors, and led by 
those renowned chieftains and champions of the sa- 
cred war, whose zeal and constancy had triumphantly 
surmounted the fiery trials of peril and temptation : 
Godfrey of Bouillon, the two Roberts of Normandy 
and of Flanders, Raymond of Thoulouse, and Tan- 
cred. Boemond, pleading the cares of his new prin- 
cipality, did not accompany their march far beyond 
its confines ; but he freely rendered his contributions 
and support to the success of the common cause ; and 
his confederates, whatever contempt and indignation 
they might feel at this personal abandonment of his 
vows, received his excuses and accepted his aid. 
From Antioch to Jaffa, a distance of about three hun- 
dred miles, the crusaders, for the convenience of sup- 
plying their wants from the Italian vessels which 
traded on the coast, chose their route along the sea- 
shore. Their advance was easy and unopposed ; for 
the Turkish Emirs of Gabala, Tortosa, Tripoli, Beri- 
tus, Tyre, Sidon, Acre, and other intervening places, 
despairing of successful resistance, either fled from 
their strongholds, or, deprecating assault, by submis- 
sion purchased the forbearance of the invaders with 
large contributions of money and provisions. At 
Jaflji, turning from the coast, the exulting host struck 
into the interior of the country, and directed their 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 155 

march upon Jerusalem itself. With devout and 
awful curiosity, the rude warriors of Europe now 
traversed a region filled with places which hourly 
recalled some sacred association ; the clergy succes- 
sively directed the religious attention of their more 
ignorant brethren to the memorable scenes of Ramula, 
Bethlehem, and Emmaus ; and at length the holy 
city burst upon their enraptured gaze. In that glo- 
rious sight, the long-cherished object, promise, and 
reward of their hopes, every toil was forgotten, every 
suffering repaid. The single mighty passion of a host 
suddenly broke forth in joyful exclamations and em- 
braces ; and these first gladsome emotions, which 
filled every heart with pious thanksgivings, were as 
quickly succeeded by feelings of deep humiliation and 
self-abasement. The proud noble, the fierce soldier, 
and the lowly pilgrim, confessed their common uu- 
worthiness even to look upon the scene which had 
witnessed the sufferings of the Redeemer of mankind ; 
and the whole armed multitude, as with one impulse, 
sinking on their knees, prostrated themselves, and 
poured out their tears over the consecrated soil.''' 

But the deliverance of the Holy City and Sepul- 
chre from infidel bondage and profanation still re- 
mained to be achieved. By the admixture of truth 
with imposture, the Mussulmans themselves had been 

* Robert, p. 71. Albert, p. 269-274. Raymond des Agiles, 
p. 165-173. Baldric, p. 127-131. Radulplius Cad. p. 317-319. 
Willermus Tyr. p. 736-745. 



156 TDE FIRST CRUSADE. 

taught to revere Jerusalem as inferior in sanctity 
only to Mecca and Medina;''' and every motive of 
religion, honour, and policy, forbade the Khalif of 
Egypt to 3-ield to the Christians that ancient pos- 
session which his arms had recently recovered from 
the Turks. Finding, therefore, his repeated offers of 
alliance and peaceful admission into Jerusalem as 
unarmed pilgrims contemptuously spurned by the 
haughty warriors of the West, he had prepared for 
the vigorous defence of the city. No less than forty 
thousand of the best troops of Egypt, under Lstakar, 
his most distinguished and favourite lieutenant, were 
assigned for its regular garrison ; and this force was 
swollen by twenty thousand Mussulman citizens and 
peasantry of the surrounding district, who, on the 
approach of the Christian invaders, took refuge within 
the walls. It was abundantly supplied with provi- 
sions ; and its ancient fortifications, which increased 
the natural strength of the site, had been diligently 
restored or repaired. As Mount Sion was no longer 
embraced within their circuit, the city, including the 
hills of Acra, Moria, Bezetha, and Golgotha, pre- 
sented the form of a parallelogram ; but, on the 
southern and eastern faces, the craggy precipices 
equally defied assault and obstructed any sally ; and 



* D'llcrbdot, BiUiotUque Orientah v. Al Cvds, p. 209. Al 
Cods, or the Holy, was the Anibic designation of Jerusak'ni. 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 



157 



■-/ry-\ ;:"»3^ri-^ ,,_ 




/^^^^^^ 



Jloit/it i>ioii. 



the two remaining sides presented the only accessible 
points of operation. 

Before these fronts the besiegers impatientl}^ 
pitched their camp. The Count of Thoulouse chose 
his station from Mount Sion along the western side ; 
Eustace of Boulogne extended his troops from the 
conclusion of the Provencal lines toward the north, 
until he adjoined the quarters of his brother. Duke 
Godfrey, whose standard was planted on the north- 
western angle at the foot of Mount Calvary ; and the 
two Roberts and Tancred continued the blockade from 
that point to the .verge of the Eastern precipices. In 



158 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

the first confidence of their fanatical valour, the cru- 
saders, fully expecting the miraculous aid of Heaven, 
rushed, on the fifth morning after the investment, to 
a furious assault of the walls of Jerusalem, without 
battering engines, without scaling ladders, without 
any of the ordinary applications of the besieging art. 
The astonishing impetuosity of their rash onset, de- 
spite of every probability and obstacle, had nearly 
delivered the city into their hands. Disregarding the 
superior numbers, the safe position, and the deadly 
missiles of the garrison, they burst through the barbi- 
can, or lower outward gate, and even penetrated to 
the foot of the main rampart. But here they were 
arrested, less by any efforts of the panic-stricken infi- 
dels, than by the mere inaccessible height of the bul- 
warks and the absence of all means of escalade. The 
Mussulmans, perceiving the inability of the assailants 
to approach them, recovered their courage; hurled 
down every destructive variety of projectiles on the 
heads of the exposed and devoted Christians; and 
finally beat them back with slaughter and confusion to 
their camp. 

The leaders of the Crusade, awakened from their 
fanatical delusion by this repulse, now prepared to pro- 
secute the siege by the rules of art. They resolved 
to construct the usual machines for breaching or over- 
towering the walls; but the immediate vicinity of 
Jerusalem afibrded no timber sufficiently large for 
these works ; and the surrounding country' was ex- 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 159 

plored for materials. It was only at the distance of 
thirty miles that, in the grove of Sichem,* trees could 
be found of suitable dimensions; and, under the di- 
rection of the indefatigable Tancred, these being felled 
were transported by the painful but zealous labour of 
the soldiery to the camp. Competent artificers were 
yet wanting, when the fortunate arrival of some Ge- 
noese galleys at Jaffa supplied this deficiency. So 
general a superiority in mechanical skill had the 
commercial people of Italy attained over the igno- 
rance of the times, that the whole Latin host were 
dependent on the fortuitous services of these mariners. 
The crews were landed at Jaffa ; an escort of troops 
was despatched to bring them up from the coast ; and, 
as soon as they reached the camp, they undertook the 
construction of three great movable towers, with pro- 
per engines for throwing missiles, undermining the 
ramparts, and battering or scaling the walls. The 
army awaited the completion of their labours in anx- 
ious suspense ; for now again were the sufferings of 
their former sieges repeated under a new variety of 
horror. The country round Jerusalem was destitute 
of water ; the rocky soil yielded few springs ; the 



* A city of Canaan, and subsequently of Samaria, and the burial- 
place of the patriarch Jacob, frequently mentioned in Scripture. It 
was situated on Mount Ephraim, where afterward stood the Flavia 
Neapolis of Herod, now the Nablous of the Arabs. It was one of 
the cities of refuge appointed by Joshua, (xx. 7,) and was the 
enchanted grove of the poet Tasso. (Gerusal. Liberata. canto xii.) 



160 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

fountains and reservoirs had been destroyed by the 
infidels ; and the streams of Siloe and Kedron were 
dried up b^' the intense heats of summer. The be- 
siegers were agonized by thirst ; a scanty supply of 
water could be procured only at a distance of several 
miles ; and the poorer multitude, who could not pay 
for its transport in gold, were obliged to wander in 
quest, of the springs, at the hazard of being cut off by 
the fleet Mussulman hordes which scoured the whole 
country. Numbers, by abstaining from food, endea- 
voured to lessen the intolerable thirst which consumed 
them ; and so extreme was the distress, that many 
gasping wretches were fain to lick up the dews of 
night from the rocks, and to excavate holes in the 
earth that they might but press their lips against the 
moister soil.'='' 

For forty days, amid this horrid drought, had the 
siege endured, before the readiness of their engines of 
assault enabled the crusaders to put a triumphant con- 
summation to their labours. When the lofty mova- 
ble towers, each of three stories, were completed, two, 
respectively manned and worked by the troops of 
Godfrey and Raymond, w^ere slowly moved forward 
toward the walls. The former leader chose his point 
of attack where the rampart had least elevation, and 
the great depth of the ditch had rendered the garrison 
negligent of its defence. Three days were laboriously 

* These expressive proofs of the height of the people's sufferings 
are given by Robert the Monk, p. 75. 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 



161 




Godfrey of Bouillon. 



consumed in filling up this fosse ; and the tower was 
then successfully rolled over the new level. Mean- 
while the Provencals had been less skilful or fortu- 
nate ; for their tower was repeatedly damaged by the 
besieged with projectiles and fire. But several ap- 
proaches were prepared against different fronts of the 
main ramparts of the place with battering and raining 
engines ; and the eager warriors only awaited the sig- 
nal of final attack. On the eve of the day appointed 
for a general assault of the city, the whole host, in 
full armament, and preceded b}^ the clergy, made a 

religious procession round the walls to invoke the 

11 . ' 



1G2 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

divine aid. Instead of banners, crucifixes were borne 
aloft at the head of the troops ; every instrument of 
martial music was hushed; and the only sounds to 
which the army moved were sacred chants of psalm- 
ody. Ascending the Mounts of Olives and of Zion, 
the crusaders halted on each of those holy places, and 
knelt in prayer; and when these solemn rites had 
elevated the devotional and warlike enthusiam of the 
soldiery to the highest pitch of excitement, the spec- 
tacle which was presented from the walls still further 
inflamed their fanatical feelings with a deadly thirst 
of revenge against the infidels. The garrison, dis- 
playing crucifixes on the ramparts, derided those re- 
vered emblems of salvation, and covered them with 
filth ; and the crusaders with shouts of fury vowed to 
wash out these impious insults in the blood of the 
perpetrators. 

Thus animated by every incentive of natural va- 
lour, religious hope, and fanatical vengeance, the cru- 
sading host advanced on the following dawn to the 
assault of Jerusalem. While showers of arrows and 
stones from the archers and balistic engines were di- 
rected against the defenders on the ramparts to cover 
the principal operations, the battering and mining 
machines and huge movable towers — all the stages 
of the latter filled with chosen bodies of knights 
and men-at-arms — were impelled toward the walls. 
But the onset was received by the Moslems with 
a courage guided by skill, and sustained by confi- 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 163 

dence or despair. From behind the defences, their 
incessant flights of missiles replied with murder- 
ous effect upon the more exposed bodies of the Latin 
archers ; masses of rock were successfully hurled upon 
the machines of the besiegers ; and the dreadful Greek 
fire was poured in liquid streams against the movable 
towers. During the day the struggle raged without 
intermission, and the event still hung in tremendous 
expense. But, at even, the slaughter among the cru- 
saders far exceeded that of the infidels ; the great 
tower of Count Raymond had been partially burned 
and disabled ; many of the other engines of assault 
had been destroyed; and the besiegers were reluc- 
tantly compelled to desist for the night from further 
efforts. Yet their heroic spirit was undismayed, 
their confidence unabated, their labour indefatigable. 
Though The Provencal tower had been arrested in 
its advance, that of Duke Godfrey was undamaged, 
and had been brought into threatening contiguity to 
the rampart ; and on other fronts of attack the walls 
of the city were shaken, and already imperfectly 
breached in several places, by the violent strokes of 
the battering-rams and the more insidious use of the 
sap. At daylight, the assault and defence were re- 
newed increased with fury ; at noon, tlie desperate 
conflict was still balanced in appalling indecision; 
but, at the third hour of the evening, the barbican 
having been beaten down, the tower of Godfrey was 
forced sufficiently near to the inner rampart to enable 



164 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 




Capture of Jerusalem.^ 



the iron-nerved chivalry of Europe to close hand to 
hand for the mastery, with the less vigorous warriors 
of the East. In that moment, so critical for the sus- 
pended cause of Christendom and Islam, the spirit 
a^d strength of the Mussulman defenders of Jerusa- 
lem, despite of their superior numbers and securer 
footing, quailed before the personal prowess of the 
champions of the cross. The frail drawbridge of the 
tower was let down upon the solid rampart ; two bro- 
thers, Letoldus and Englebert, of Tournay, in Flan- 
ders, were the first and second of the crusading war- 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 165 

riors who sprang upon the battlements ; and Godfrey 
of Bouillon^ himself the third, planted his banner 
on the walls.* His victorious example was followed 
with irresistible energy ; in quick succession the Duke 
of Normandy, the Count of Flanders, and Tancred, 
burst through the gate of St. Stephen into the city ; 
and at every breach in the works a passage was im- 
petuously forced by their emulous associates and fol- 
lowers. Meanwhile, the Count of Thoulouse, dis- 
daining to enter the place in the train of his more 
successful confederates, gallantly inspired his Proven- 
cals to carry the rampart in their front by escalade ; 
the defenders, appalled by the defeat of their bre- 
thren, wavered and fled ; and, in all quarters, the 
ensign of the cross floated over the towers of Jeru- 
salem. 

Abandoning all further hope, the fleeing multitude 
of the Moslems thronged to die under the sacred 
domes of their Mosques. The victors pursued them 
with a relentless fury, which consigned men, women, 
and children to indiscriminate slaughter. The pas- 
sive and unresisting despair with which the helpless 
and miserable crowds awaited their fate, neither 
awakened the pity nor satiated the bloody vengeance 

* The author of L' Esprit des Croisades arranges the series of the 
successful assailants somewhat differently, viz. thus : — Godfrey, Eu- 
stace, Baldwin de Burgh, Bernard de St. Valier, De Guicher, and 
De Raimbaud Croton. These took the lead in the order in which 
they are named, followed closely by D'Amanjeu d'Albret, and Leo- 
told and Englcbert of Tournay ; iv. 420. 



166 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

of their savage destroyers. The outrages which the 
Infidels had formerly inflicted on the Christian pil- 
grims, and the insults with which they had recently 
derided the cross, were sternly remembered and fear- 
fully avenged; the very sight of the sacred places 
which they had profaned with their false worship 
served to heighten the fanatical rage of the conquer- 
ors against the fugitives who sought shelter in those 
edifices; and it was the boast of the Latin princes, in 
a public letter which they addressed to the pope,"''' 
that, in the splendid mosque erected by the Khalif 
Omar on the site of the Temple of Solomon,-)* they 
rode up to their horses' knees in the blood of the 
Infidels. In that principal sanctuary alone, ten thou- 
sand persons were massacred ; every minor retreat in 
the city was explored with equally fierce diligence by 
the swords of the crusaders; and the horrid computa- 
tion of the total carnage on the battlements, through- 
out the streets, and in the churches and houses, has 
been variously extended to an incredible number of 
both sexes and all ages.J 



* Martcnne, Thesaurus Novus, vol. i. p. 281. 

f D'Aiiville, Diss, sw VAncicnne Jerusalem, ^. 42-53. 

t By the IMussulman writers (De Guiges, vol. ii. p. 99, and Abul- 
feda, apud KcLskc, vol. iii. p. 319), the numbers massacred are 
stated as high as seventy or even one hundred thousand souls : but 
these were traditional estimates long after the event; and the last 
probably exceeds the amount of the whole population of Jerusalem 
at the period. William of Tyre, who alone of the Latin chroniclers 
attempts a precise enumeration, gives twenty thousand as the number 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 1G7 

These dreadful scenes of fanatical cruelty, from 
which reason and humanity equally revolt, were fol- 
lowed by a sudden transition of passion, as strangely 
but less painfully characteristic of the times; and, the 
events of the single day on which Jerusalem way 
stormed, forcibly exemplify the unnatural union of 
those motives of martial achievement, ferocious in- 
tolerance, and fervent piety, which produced the Cru- 
sade. The mailed warriors who had sworn and ac- 
complished the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre in 
arms, hastened, as humble and repentant pilgrims, to 
complete their vows of adoration, at that hallowed 
monument of redemption. Duke Godfrey, after him- 
self staining the example of heroic courage with 
merciless slaughter, threw aside his reeking sword, 
washed his bloody hands, exchanged his armour for a 
white linen tunic, and, with bare head and feet, re- 
paired in pious humiliation to the Church of the 
Sepulchre. The same religious impulse was quickly 
communicated to his fellow-warriors; the inhuman 
fanaticism which had so lately steeled their hearts 
against every softer emotion, was all at once relaxed 
into a flood of contrite and tearful devotion ; and the 
whole host in turn, discarding their arms and purify- 
ing their persons from the signs of recent slaughter, 
moved in procession to the Hill of Calvary, and in 
mingled penitence for their sins, and thanksgiving for 

of victims in the first massacre, of whom one half fell in the Mosque 
of Omar. 



168 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

their victoiy, wept over the tomb of the Saviour of 
the world. After these religious exercises, a loose 
was given to the general joy both of the Latin con- 
querors and the native Christians, who had either 
been retained in the city during the siege, or had 
gathered in the crusading quarters. Among the 
latter was the Patriarch of Jerusalem; wdio, after 
seeking a retreat from the Mussulman tyranny in 
Cyprus, had lately arrived in the camp. lie in- 
structed his flock to honour, in the person of Peter 
the Hermit, the faithful missionary whose indignation 
and piety had been moved by the spectacle of their 
bondage to the Infidels, and whose holy zeal had 
roused the nations of the Western World to under- 
take their deliverance. The grateful multitudes pros- 
trated themselves before the poor Solitary of Amiens, 
as a revered and chosen servant of God ; and, if the 
sincerity of the fanatic, who, to perform this service, 
had twice traversed Europe and Asia, may be mea- 
sured by his indefatigable labours in the imaginary 
cause of Heaven, the spiritual triumph which re- 
warded his success must have surpassed the most ex- 
quisite enjoyment of temporal ambition. '=' 

Among the conscious offences which humbled the 



* It is singular that, after his reception of this public homage, the 
name of the Hermit occurs not again in any contemporary or 
authentic record ; and history has altogether forgotten to notice the 
subsequent fate of the man who had moved the population of Europe 
from its foundations. 



CAPTUIIE OF JERUSALEM. 169 

souls of the crusaders in contrition and prayer before 
the altar of the Sepulchre, they were so far from 
numbering their cruelties to the Infidels, that they 
deemed the late work of slaughter a meritorious offer- 
ing to the God of Mercies. To every pious and en- 
lightened mind there can be few subjects of contem- 
plation more offensive and painful than this alliance 
of a devotion, which, though mj^taken, was sincere, 
with so ferocious and dark a superstition. Scenes of 
bloodshed similar to those which had preceded, also 
followed the interval of worship; and, on the morning 
after the capture of Jerusalem, the crusaders delibe- 
rately renewed the massacre of the Infidel garrison 
and inhabitants. The Jews of the city were burned 
alive in their synagogues; the Mussulman captives 
who had been spared by the lassitude, and the 
fugitives who had eluded the first search of the 
victors, were now dragged from their prisons and 
hiding-places, and remorselessly butchered. All — 
even women, children, and infants at the breast — 
shared the same fate, except a few wretched Mussul- 
mans, who owed their escape from the general 
slaughter, not to the humanity, but to the covetous- 
ness of the Count of Thoulouse, who rescued them for 
sale as slaves, and incurred the censure of the army 
by preferring the indulgence of his avarice to that of 
his fanaticism. With the rest of the crusaders, the 
former passion was only second to their cruelty; and 
the work of pillage proceeded simultaneously with 



170 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

that of bloodshed. By previous agreement, the rich 
plunder of the mosques, which abounded with lamps 
and vases of gold and silver, was dedicated to the 
ser^dce of the church and the relief of the poor ; but 
each house became the property of the first warrior 
who burst its door, and suspended his shield from its 
walls.'^ 

The infidel inhabitants of Jerusalem had been ex- 
tirpated ; and the law of conquest supplied a new and 
Christian population. When the victorious soldierj- 
had divided the possession of the Holy City, her 
streets were cleansed from the horrid pollution of" 
recent slaughter by the labour of some Mussulman 
slaves; the churches and mosques were delivered up 
to the clergy and dedicated afresh, or now first con- 
verted to the purposes of Christian worship ; and. 
tenanted by the various population of her martial 
citizens from every Western nation, Jerusalem pre- 
sented the novel aspect of an European settlement. 
After the occupation of the city, the earliest care of 
the leaders of the Crusade was given to the duty of 



*In the Mosque of Omar, no fewer than seventy massive lamps of 
gold and silver were found by Tancred, and surrendered to the pre- 
scribed uses of religion and charity; but not, if wc may believe 
Malrasbury, (p. 443,) before the costliness of the prize had seduced 
the hero, in a moment of unwonted frailty, to forget the usual purity 
of his virtue. He attempted to secrete the spoils for his private 
profit, until he was driven, either by the reproaches of his own con- 
science, or dread of public censure, to make restitution of his booty 
to the Ecclesiastical Treasury. 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 171 

securing their conquest. The establishment of a 
feudal kingdom in Palestine was obviously suggested 
by the familiar example of the same form of polity in 
the Western monarchies, and by the necessity of 
organizing a martial system of tenures for the de- 
fence of the Christian state and the protection of the 
Holy Sepulchre. On the eighth day, therefore, after 
the capture of the city, the princely and noble chief- 
tains of the crusading host assembled to confer, by 
their free voices, tlie feudal sovereignty of Jerusalem, 
with its future dependencies, upon one of their bod}^ 
The accidents of war had diminished the number of 
those great leaders of the European chivalry wdio, by 
their hereditary rank, the strong array of their re- 
tainers, or the influence of personal character, were 
entitled to aspire to this honour. Boemond and 
Baldwin were already seated in the principalities of 
Antioch and Edessa, and had withdrawn themselves 
from immediate participation in the crowning glories 
of the Holy War; the great Count of Vermandois 
and the Count of Chartres had, with deeper reproach, 
altogether deserted the sacred expedition ; and al- 
though, in chivalric fame, Tancred was at least their 
equal, the princes of sovereign rank who remained 
with the army were four only in number; the two 
Roberts, of Normandy and of Flanders, the Count of 
Thoulouse, and the Duke of Brabant. Of these 
princes, if w^e may believe our Anglo-Norman waiters, 
the crown of Jerusalem was offered first to the brave 



172 THE FIRST CRUSADE, 

but prodigal son of the Conqueror, and declined by 
his modest distrust of his own merits, by his less 
praiseworthy indolence, or by his preference of his 
European Duchy. If, on the other hand, we credit 
the Proven9al chroniclers of the Crusade, the same 
proffer and refusal of the regal dignity must be ascribed 
to the Count of Thoulouse."'' But the tale of Robert's 
election is entirely discredited by the silence of every 
immediate chronicler of the Crusade ; and the grasp- 
ing ambition and selfish cupidity ever displayed by 
the Count of Thoulouse, both before and after the fall 
of Jerusalem, are not only incompatable with the dis- 
interestedness imputed to him by his adherents, but 
are expressly stated by a better authority-j- to have 
occasioned the rejection of his claims. Between 
Robert of Flanders and his friend the Duke of Bra- 
bant, if there existed any rivalry in pretension, there 
was at least no equality of merit ; and, in opposition 
to the intrigues of the wily and jealous Provencal, the 
general voice of the assembly proclaimed Godfrey of 
Bouillon as the most deserving, both by his prowess 
and piety, among all the princely champions of the 
Cross, to receive the crown of Jerusalem and the 
guardianship of the Holy Sepulchre. The spirit of 
Godfrey was too magnanimous to shrink from the 
perilous and unquiet charge which intrusted to him 

* Raymond dcs Agiles, p. 179. Albert. Aquensis, p. 283. Gui- 
bert, p. 537. 

fWillermusTyr. 763. 




GODFREY OF BOUILLON ELECTED KING OF JERUSALEM. 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 173 

rather the sword of the crusader than the sceptre of a 
feudal king. [July 23, 1090.] He was immedi- 
ately conducted in solemn procession to the church of 
the Sepulchre, and there inaugurated in his new 
office; but, with the pious humility which distin- 
guished his character, he refused to have a regal 
diadem placed on his brows in that city, wherein his 
Saviour had worn a crown of thorns; and modestly 
declining the name with the decoration of a king, he 
would accept no prouder title than that of Advocate 
or Defender of the tomb of Christ. '=' 

The estimation in which Godfrey was held by the 
army, may be known from the universal lamentation 
which prevailed when he met with a disaster in Asia 
Minor. When alone in the dense part of a forest, the 
duke heard the cries of a poor pilgrim, who had been 
attacked by a bear, while cutting wood. Godfrey 
hastened to his relief, when the bear quitted his vic- 
tim to attack his new enemy. He seized the duke by 
the cloak and dragged him to the ground. His sword 
being entangled between his legs, Godfrey wounded 
himself severely in the thigh in attempting to draw 
it. Ho continued the fight, however, till the noise 
1) rough t others to the spot. A knight, named Hase- 
quin, despatched the bear with his sword, and the 

* The title of Advocate or Defender of a church or monastery was 
familiar to the age of Godfrey : when, under that term, it was cus- 
tomary for ecclesiastical bodies to purchase the protection of some 
prince or powerful noble. But see Du Cenge v. Advocaius. 



174 TUE FIRST CRUSADE. 

almost exhausted duke was borne to the camp, where 
the loss of a battle would scarcely have spread more 
consternation than the unhappy spectacle he afforded 
to the eyes of the Christians. 

From the election of Godfrey of Bouillon may be 
dated the foundation of the Latin Kingdom of Jeru- 
SELEM.'=' By that event, stability was given to the 
recent conquests of the crusaders; and Jerusalem, 
which, after a possession of more than four hundred 
and fifty years since its surrender to Omar, had been 
wrested out of the hands of the disciples of Moham- 
med, was converted into the capital of a Christian 
state. After the worthy choice of a sovereign to de- 
fend and govern their conquests, it remained for the 
crusaders only to secure their maintenance and exten- 
sion by regulating the martial, civil, and ecclesiastical 
institutions of the new kingdom. The religious zeal 

* Robertus Mon. p. 74-77. Albertus Aquensis, p. 275-289. 
Biildricus Arch. p. 132-134. Kaymond dcs Agiles, p. 175-178. 
Kadulphus Cad. p. 320-324. Fulchrius. Carnot, p. 396-400. 
Guibert, p. 533-537. Willermus Tyr. p. 746-703, &c. 

These references embrace the original autliorities for all the details 
jriven in the test of the siege and capture of Jerusalem. But, 
throughout the above narrative, the present compilation is also largely 
indebted to the labours of our modern English historians of the 
same events : to the LVIIIth chapter of Gibbon, which, though not 
exempt from some errors of fact and more obliquities of sentiment, 
offers a masterly sketch of the spirit and transactions of the First 
Crusade; and to the more recent and ample work of Mr. W\\h, who 
{Historij of the Crmades, vol. i. c. 1-6) has industriously exhausted 
the stores of the Latin chroniclers, and executed his design with 
equal truth and ability. 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 175 

and the prudential policy of the conquerors were yet 
to be exercised in providing for its defence ; but their 
vows were already accomplished; and the great de- 
sign of the First Crusade had been concluded in the 
triumphant recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. 



176 



THE SECOND CRUSADE. 




CHAPTER n. 



%\ft .§cf0nij (irusabf. 



SECTION I.— STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 




ITIIIN a short month after his elec- 
tion to fill the throne of Jerusalem, 
the pious and gallant Godfrej' of Bou- 
illon was summoned into the field to 
.... 3 sustain that arduous office of defender 
of the Holy Sepulchre, which his modesty had pre- 
ferred to the regal title. The Khalif of Egypt, roused 
to equal indignation and alarm by the intelligence of 
the fall of Jerusalem, had immediately despatched a 



STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 177 

great army into Palestine; and the influence of a 
common religion and cause attracted numerous hordes 
of Turks and Saracens to the Fatimite standard. The 
usual exaggeration of the Latin chroniclers has swollen 
the infidel host into countless myriads : their more 
authentic record of the Christian force shows that the 
bands of the crusaders had already dwindled, since 
the capture of the Holy City, to five thousand horse 
and fifteen thousand foot-soldiers. But the champions 
of the cross, however inferior in numbers, were flushed 
with recent victory, and animated by the unconquera- 
ble energy of religious and martial enthusiasm. The- 
armies met at Ascalon ; [August 12, 1099 :] and the 
organized and mail-clad chivalry of Europe once more 
triumphed over the disorderly multitudes of Egypt, 
Syria, and Arabia. The Fatimites fled at the first 
charge of Godfrey and Tancred ; and the only resist- 
ance which the crusaders encountered was from a 
band of five thousand black Africans ; who, after the 
discharge of a galling flight of arrows from an am- 
bush, astonished the Latins by a novel mode of close 
combat with balls of Iron fastened to leathern thongs, 
which they swung with terrific effect. But, after the 
first moment of surprise, the desperate courage and 
rude weapons of these barbarians were vainly opposed 
to the sharp lances and physical weight of the Chris- 
tian gens-d'armerie ; and their destruction or flight 
completed the easy and merciless victory of the cru- 
saders. Of the infidel host, the incredible numbers 

12 



178 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

of thirty thousand in the battle, and sixty thousand 
in the pursuit, are declared to have been slaughtered : 
while of the Latins scarcely a man had been killed. 
An immense booty, the spoils of the Egyptian camp, 
fell into the hands of the victors ; and the standard 
and sword of the khalif, being alone reserved from 
the division of the plunder, were piously suspended 
by Godfrey over the altar of the Sepulchre at Jeru- 
salem.* 

The victory of Ascalon was the last combined ex- 
ploit of the heroes of the first Crusade. Having ac- 
comjDlished their vow, and bidden a farewell to their 
magnanimous leader, most of the surviving princes 
and chieftains of the holy war departed for Europe. 
Boemond was established at Antioch, and Baldwin at 
Edessa; but of all his compeers, Godfrey could in- 
duce only the devoted Tancred to share his fortunes ; 
and no more than three hundred knights, and as 
many thousand foot soldiers, remained for the defence 
of Palestine. But the terror of the Christian arms 
proved, for a season at least, a sufficient protection to 
the new state ; the Mussulmans were easily expelled 
from the shores of Lake Genesareth ; and the emirs 
of Ascalon, Caisarea, and Acre, hastened to deprecate 
the hostility of the crusading king by submission and 
tribute. The remainder of Godfrey's brief reign was 
disturbed only by the intrigues of Daimbert, Arch- 

* Albertus Aquensis, p. 290-294. Willermus Tyr. p. 763-773. 



STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 179 

bishop of Pisa, who had been appointed by Pope Pas- 
cal 11/'' to succeed Adhemar of Puj as legate of the 
holy see, and had now been invested with the patri- 
archate of Jerusalem. As chief, in this double capa- 
city, of the Latin church in the East, Daimbert auda- 
ciously claimed the disposal of those acquisitions 
which the heroes of the Crusade had carved out with 
their own good swords ; and both Godfrey and Boe- 
mond condescended to receive from his hands, as vas- 
sals of the church, the feudal investure of the states 
of Jerusalem and Antioch. But even this submission 
did not satisfy the pride and cupidity of Daimbert ; 
he claimed the entire possession of Jerusalem and 
Jaffa; and Godfrey, who shrank with superstitious 
horror from the idea of a contest with the church, 
was glad to compound with the demand of the rapa- 
cious prelate,f by the surrender of the whole of the 



* According to the vulgar belief, Pope Urban 11. died of joy on 
learning the conquest of Jerusalem; but, as Mr. Mills has observed, 
(^Hist. of the Crusades, vol. i. 268,) the decease of that pontiflF oc- 
curred only fifteen days after the capture of the city, and therefore 
too soon to have been produced by the receipt of the glad intelli- 
gence in Italy. 

■|" Even the Archbishop of Tyre, despite of the zeal for the su- 
premacy of the church which he may be supposed naturally to have 
felt, is disgusted by the audacious pretension of the patriarch, and 
relates the tale with indignant candour. Willermus Tyr. p. 771. 
The truth is, however, that besides the intense and disinterested de- 
votion of Godfrey to the church, and which was one of the charac- 
teristics of the age, he could not dispense with the aid of the Pisans 
and Genoese, who were wholly under the control of Daimbert, nor 



180 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

latter city, and a portion, including the sepulchre 
itself, of the sacred capital. The patriarch further 
extorted the monstrous condition, that the unreserved 
dominion of all Jerusalem should escheat to his see, 
in case Godfrey died without issue. [July 11, A. D. 
1100.] That event occurred too shortly for the hap- 
piness of a people whom the good prince governed 
with paternal benevolence; and to the sorrow not 
only of the Christian inhabitants of Palestine, but 
even of their Mussulman tributaries, he breathed his 
last at the early age of forty years, five days pre- 
ceding the first anniversary of his reign.* 

On the death of Godfrey, the barons of the Latin 
kingdom of Palestine indignantly refused to ratify the 
promised cession which the patriarch demanded ; and 
it was resolved that the unimpaired rights of the 
crown over Jerusalem should be bestowed with its 
temporal sovereignty. Tancred desired that the 
election should fall on his relative Boemond, Prince 
of Antioch ; but that prince had, at this critical junc- 
ture, been made prisoner by an Armenian chieftain, 
whose territories he had unjustly invaded; and a 
general feeling that some preference was due to the 
claims of the house of Bouillon, decided the choice of 



venture upon a quarrel with the Holy See, whose emissary the pa- 
triarch was. He had no alternative, but to act as he did act, or to 
abandon his newly acquired kingdom. 
* Albert, p. 294-299. Guibert. p. 537-554. Will. Tyr. p. 773- 
775. 



STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 



181 




Tancred.. 



the barons in favour of Baldwin, Prince of Edessa. 
Resigning his principality to his relative and name- 
sake, Baldwin du Bourg, the brother of Godfrey, 
hastened to the Holy City; and, after some fruitless 
opposition, the patriarch solemnly crowned the new 
King of Jerusalem in the church of Bethlehem. The 
memory of the wrongs which he had sustained from 
Baldwin, inspired Tancred with a more excusable and 
lasting repugnance to his pretensions 5 and refusing to 
swear allegiance to au enemy, the Italian chieftain 



182 TUE SECOND CRUSADE. 

retired from Jerusalem to Antioch, of which he 
assumed the regency during the captivity of Boe- 
mond. But an accommodation was eflected by the 
good offices of the barons; and the king and the re- 
gent of Antioch were left at leisure to provide for the 
security of their states against the common Mussul- 
man enemy.'-' The character of Baldwin rose with 
his elevation; and, on the throne of Jerusalem, he, 
who during the Crusade had disgusted his compeers 
by a selfish and treacherous ambition, displayed a dis- 
interested and magnanimous devotion to his regal 
duties, which won the respect and love of his people, 
and proved him no unworthy successor of his brother. 
During a reign of eighteen years, he not only sus- 
tained with zeal and ability the arduous office of 
defending the Latin state from the assaults of the 
Infidels, but extended its limits and increased its 
security. 

In these effi)rts he was much assisted by the re- 
mains of several armaments from Europe, which may 
be regarded as a supplement to the first Crusade. 
The spirit which had animated that enterprise still 
Imrned with undiminished intensity; and, in the 
course of a few years, Hugh of Vermandois, and 
Stephen of Chartres — the same leaders who had re- 
tired with little honour from their first expedition — 
the Dukes of Aquitaine and of Bavaria, the Counts of 

* Albert, p. 300-308. Will. Tyr. p. 775, 77G. 



STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 183 

Burgundy, of Vendome, of Nevers, and of Parma, and 
of other princes, severally conducted into Asia whole 
armies of French, Gascon, Flemish, German, and 
Italian crusaders, whose aggregate has been computed 
by a modern writer at the astonishing number of 
little less than half a million of men.* These suc- 
cessive hosts took the same route, and encountered 
the same sufferings and disasters, from the dubious 
faith of the Byzantine court, the incessant attacks of 
the Turks, and the triple scourge of the sword, famine, 
and pestilence, which had swept off the myriads of 
their precursors. f But a very small proportion of 
those who had reached the Bosphorus, survived the 
horrors of the passage through Asia Minor : yet the 
remnant which entered Syria still fed the Christian 
cause in Palestine with a constant supply of veteran 
warriors; and by their aid, and more especially by 

* Mills. Hist, of Crusades, vol. i. 290, note. 

J Both the Counts of Vermandois and of Chartres, who found 
themselves compelled by the public contempt of a chivalrous age to 
return to Palestine, perished in the attempt to redeem the fame 
which they had lost by the former abandonment of their crusading 
vows. The great Count of Vermandois died at Tarsus of wounds 
received in battle with the Turks of Cilicia; and the Count of 
Chartres only survived his second march into Palestine to be taken 
prisoner and murdered in the frontier warfare by the Egyptian Mus- 
sulmans. He had been driven to engage in the supplementary Cru- 
sade by the high-spirited reproaches of his Countess Adela, daughter 
of the Norman conqueror, who had sworn to allow him no peace 
until he should repair his dishonour. He was father to Stephen, the 
English usurper. Orderic Vital, p. 790-793. Will. Tyr. 781-787. 
Albert, p. 315-325. Anna Comnena, lib. ix. p. 331. 



184 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

that of some maritime expeditions from the European 
shores, many Mussuhnan invasions were repelled, and 
many conquests achieved. In the third year of his 
reign, Baldwin I.,'-' after reducing Azotus, was enabled 
to form the siege of Acre; and by the opportune 
arrival of an armament of seventy Genoese galleys, 
filled with crusaders, in the following spring, that 
valuable conquest was completed after a protracted 
resistance. [A. 0.1104.] Beritus and Sarepta were 
also reduced and converted into Christian lordships; 
and Sidon became the next object of assault. With 
an interval of four years, two fleets of Scandinavian 

*In the preceding year, the King of Jerusalem had narrowly 
escaped captivity or death, through a rash assault which he ventured 
upon the Egyptian invaders of Palestine with a vanguard of only a 
few hundred horse. His followers were overwhelmed by superior 
numbers, and almost all cut to pieces ; and it was on this occasion 
that the Count of Chartres was taken and murdered. The story of 
Baldwin's escape presents one of the few gleams of generous senti- 
ment which relieve the dark picture of a fanatical and savage war- 
fare. Upon some former occasion, Baldwin had captured a noble 
Saracen woman, whose flight was arrested by the pangs of childbirth, 
and, after humanely rcnderingher every attention, had released her and 
her infant in safety. The husband was serving in the Mussulman ranks, 
when Baldwin, after the slaughter of his followers, with difficulty 
reached a castle, whither the victors immediately pursued him. The 
place was surrounded, and the capture of the King would have been 
inevitable, if the grateful Emir had not secretly approached the walls 
at midnight, announced his design of delivering the preserver of his 
wife and child, and, at the hazard of his own life, conveyed him in 
safety from the castle, which Baldwin had scarcely quitted when it 
was stormed, and the whole gai-rison put to the sword. Will. Tyr. 
p. 787, 788. For the details of this romantic incident, see Michaud, 
vol. i. 279. 



STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM, 185 

crusaders, who had performed the long voyage from 
the Baltic through the Straits of Gibralter to the 
Syrian shores, [a. d. 1115;] co-operated with the 
Christian forces of Palestine in the siege of that city ; 
and although the first attempt was repulsed, the 
second proved successful/-' 

All these acquisitions were incorporated into the 
Idngdom of Jerusalem. But a more important exten- 
sion of the Christian territories in Syria had mean- 
while been effected, and added to the number of dis- 
tant principalities. The veteran Count of Thoulouse 
prevailed upon some of the French princes whom, in 
the supplemental Crusade, he had guided with the 
remains of their forces through Asia Minor, to subju- 
gate Tortosa, on the coast of Syria, for his benefit. 
The nucleus of a new state was thus formed, which 
Raymond employed his Provencal troops in extend- 
ing ; but he died before he could accomplish the re- 
duction of the city of Tripoli, the object of his ambi- 
tion, and the destined capital of his Oriental domi- 
nions. Some years afterward, that conquest was ef- 
fected for his eldest son Bertrand, by the King of 
Jerusalem, seconded by all the Latin princes of the 
East, and a Pisan and Genoese fleet. Tripoli, with 
its surrounding district and dependencies, was then 
erected by Baldwin into a county for the house of 
Thoulouse ; [a. d. 1109 ;] and this new state, which, 

* Albert, p. 345-365. Will. Tyr. p. 791-805. 



186 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

although feudally subject to the crown of Jerusalem, 
partook in extent and dignity rather of the charac- 
ter of a sovereign principality than of a mere fief, 
contributed much b}^ its position between the territo- 
ries of Antioch and Palestine to secure and cement 
the communication and strength of the Christian 
power.'-' But the affairs of Antioch were perpetually 
embroiled by the restless ambition of its prince. 
During his captivity in Armenia, the government of 
that state was ably administered by Tancred; but, 
after obtaining his release, Boemond by his refusal to 
acknowledge the feudal superiority of the Eastern 
Emperor Alexius, involved himself in a new war, in 
which he was assisted by the Pisans. The Byzantine 
arms prevailing by land, Boemond sailed to Europe to 
plot a diversion against the Grecian territories of his 
ancient enemy ; and, having succeeded by his martial 
reputation in assembling a large army of crusaders in 
France and Italy, he landed at Durazzo. Alexius 
was then glad to conclude an accommodation with 
him; and the crusading forces pursuing the usual 
route through the Byzantine territories to Palestine, 
the Prince of Antioch returned to Italy, where he died 
in the following year. After his decease, the noble 
minded Tancred continued to rule the Syrian prin- 
cipality, until his chivalrous career was appropriately 
terminated by a mortal wound which he had received 

* Will. Tyr. p. 701 -79G. 



STATE OF TUE LATIN" KINGDOM. 187 

in battle ; and, after some uninteresting revolutions 
in the government of Antiocli, the eldest son of Boe- 
mond, who bore his name, finally arrived in Asia, and 
successfully claimed the principality as his inheritance.'^' 
Meanwhile, the isolated state of Edessa, surrounded 
on all sides by Armenian and Turkish enemies, was 
only preserved from destruction by the heroic valour 
of its count, Baldwin du Bourg, and his relative, Jos- 
celyn de Courtenay, a member of a noble French 
house, which was rendered more illustrious by his 
exploits in the East than by the subsequent alliance 
of a collateral branch with the royal blood of France, 
and a succession of three emperors to the Latin throne 
of Constantinople.-!* 

* Radulphus Cad. p. 327-330. Fulcher. p. 419, 420. Albert. 
p. 340-354. Will. Tyr. p. 792-807. Anna Comnena, lib. xiv. p. 
329-419. 

f The adventure and vicissitudes of fortune which Joscelyn de 
Courtenay underwent in the East, as well as his chivalrous deeds, 
might form the groundwork of a tale of romance. He had ori- 
ginally accompanied the Count of Chartres from Europe in the sup- 
plementary Crusade, and settled at Edessa with his relation Baldwin, 
together with whom he was taken prisoner in a defeat which the 
crusaders sustained from the Emir of Aleppo. After five years' cap- 
tivity, the friends were released by the stratagem of some Armenian 
partizans, who, entering the fortress in which they were confined, in 
the disguise of monks and traders, surprised and slew the Turkish 
garrison. Baldwin then bestowed a portion of the Edessine territo- 
ries in sovereignty upon Courtenay. But, upon some jealousy, Jos- 
celyn was treacherously lured to Edessa by his benefactor, put to the 
torture, and compelled to resign his domains. Indignant at this 
treatment, Courtenay withdrew to Jerusalem, where his services 
against the infidels were rewarded by Baldwin I. with the Tiberiad 



188 THE SECOND CRUSADE, 

By the death of his kinsman, Baldwin I., the Count 
of Edessa was called to receive the crown of Jerusalem. 
On the junction of new bands of crusaders from Eu- 
rope, Baldwin I. had been encouraged to revenge the 
incessant attacks of the Fatimite khalifs of Egypt, 
by an invasion of that country; and his career of 
victory on this expedition was cut short only by 
the hand of death."^ Leaving no issue, he, with his 
last breath, recommended his cousin Baldwin du 
Bourg for his successor; [A. d. 1118;] and, after the 
retreat of the crusading host into Palestine, which 
was the immediate consequence of the dejection pro- 
duced by his death, the Latin prelate and barons 
were induced, by respect for his memory, and the 
claims of consanguinity, as well as by the advice of 
Joscelyn de Courtenay, to confirm his choice. Bald- 

for a fief. Notwithstanding the wrongs by which his patron had 
cancelled former benefits, Joscelyn generously promoted his elevation 
to the throne of Jerusalem, and received the county of Edessa from 
his gratitude. Baldwin a second time falling into the hands of the 
infidels, after he had become king, Joscelyn obtained his liberation 
among the consequences of the fall of Tyre. The death of the hero 
at an advanced age was a worthy termination of his exploits. Being 
unable to sit on horseback, he was carried in a litter to the field ; the 
Mussulmans fled at the very report of his presence ; and he died 
giving thanks to Heaven that the mere fame of his ancient prowess 
suflaced to scatter the enemies of God. Will. Tyr. p. 853. 

* At El-Arish, supposed to be the ancient Rhinocorura, a frontier 
town of Syria and Egypt, in the year 1118, on his return from an 
expedition against the Soldan of Egypt. On his death-bed he re- 
quested that his body might be deposited beside that of his brother 
Godfrey at Jerusalem. 



' ' ' hlll'lll ' l' 




STATE OF THE KINGDOM. 189 

win du Bourg was therefore elected without opposition 
to fill the vacant throne, and immediately recompensed 
the services of Courtenay by resigning to him the pos- 
session of the county of Edessa. The principal event 
in the reign of Baldwin II. was the reduction of Tyre. 
The Doge of Venice, Ordelafo Falieri, who had led 
the navy of his republic on a martial pilgrimage to 
the coast of Palestine, was induced, after . bargaining 
for the possession and sovereignty of one third of that 
city,* to co-operate in the undertaking ; and by a siege 
of five months the difficult conquest was achieved. 
[A. D. 1124.] Tyre was erected into an archbishopric 
under the patriarchate of Jerusalem ; and by the cap- 
ture of a city, which, though fallen from its ancient 
grandeur, was still the most opulent port on the Sy- 
rian coast, and had formed the last strong-hold of the 
Mussulmans in Palestine, the Latin power may be 

* All the maritime republics of Italy, with their characteristic 
mercantile cupidity, extorted great commercial advantages as the price 
of their services to the crusaders. At Acre, the Grenoese obtained a 
street and many privileges in return for the aid of their fleet in the 
siege, (Will. Tyr. p. 791;) the Pisans, by treaty with Tancred, were 
rewarded in like manner for their services to the state of Antioch, 
with the property of a street both in that capital and in Laodicea, 
(Muratori, Aniiq. Ital. Med. jEvi, Diss. 30 ;) the Venetians, in ad- 
dition to their settlement at Tyre, received by stipulation a church 
and street at Jerusalem ; and throughout the Christian possessions 
in Palestine and Syria generally, the three republics contended, often 
with bloodshed, for the right of establishing places of exchange, and 
enjoying the common or exclusive privileges of trade. Sabellicus, 
Hist. Venet. dec. i. lib. vi. Marini, Storia Civ. e Polit. del. Com- 
mercio de' Veneziani, vol. iii. lib. i. cap. 4-6, &c. 



190 



THE SECOND CRUSADE. 




Ruins of Tyre. 

said to have attained its greatest consolidation and 
security.* 

When the kingdom of Jerusalem had thus acquired 
its utmost extent, it embraced all the country of Pa- 
lestine between the sea-coast and the deserts of Ara- 
bia, from the city of Beritus on the north to the fron- 
tiers of Egypt on the south : forming a territory about 
sixty leagues in length and thirty in breadth; and 
exclusive of the county of Tripoli, which stretched 



* Albert, p. 365-377. Fulcher. p. 423-440. Will. T>r. p. 805- 
846, passim. 



STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 191 

northward from Beritus to the borders of the Anti- 
ochan principality. The whole territory, both of the 
kingdom and county, was occupied by the warriors of 
the cross, upon the strictest principles of a feudal set- 
tlement, with all the subdivisions and conditions of 
tenure which belonged to that martial polity. Its 
adoption was suggested* not more by every feeling 
and custom of the age which the conquerors had 



* The institution of the feudal code of Jerusalem dates from the 
first year of the Latin conquest, and its compilation was directed by 
Grodfrey de Bouillon himself; who, with the advice of the patriarch 
and barons, appointed several commissioners among the crusaders 
most learned in the feudal statutes and customs of Europe to frame 
a body of similar laws for the new kingdom. Their digest was so- 
lemnly accepted in a general assembly of prelates and barons ; and, 
under the title of the Assises de Jerusalem, became thenceforth the 
recognized code of the Latin state. The original instrument, which 
was deposited in the Holy Sepulchre, and revised and considerably 
enlarged by the legislation of succeeding reigns, is said to have been 
lost at the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin; but, during the last 
agony of the expiring state, the provisions of the code, which had 
been preserved by traditionary and customary authority, were again 
collected in a written form, A. D. 1250, by Jean d'Ibelin, Count of 
Jaffa, one of the four great barons of the kingdom ; and a second 
and final revision was prepared in Cyprus, A. D. 1369, by sixteen 
commissioners, for the use of the Latin kingdom in that island. 
From a MS. of this Cypriot version, in the Vatican library, was pub- 
lished at Paris, A. D. 1690, by Thaumassi^re, the edition of the 
Assises de Jerusalem, to which we are indebted for our acquaintance 
with this " precious monument," as a great writer has justly termed 
it, "of feudal jurisprudence." But for the history of the code, see 
Assises de Jerusalem apud Thaumassiere, Preface. Consult also 
Gibbon, xi. 91-98 for a summary, and L'Esprit des Croisades, iv. 
484. 



192 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

brought with them from Europe, than by the obvious 
necessity of such a state of perpetual preparation for 
the public defence against the incessant assaults of 
their infidel enemies ; and it is almost needless to 
repeat, that, under no other form of settlement, pro- 
bably, could the Latin conquests have been preserved 
by the scanty array of their resident defenders in so 
unremitting a warfare with the myriads of Turkish and 
Egyptian Mussulmans. At its highest computation, 
indeed, the feudal force of the kingdom of Jerusalem 
would appear very inadequate to its protection. The 
four great fiefs of Jaffa, Galilee, Caesarea, and Tripoli, 
with the royal cities of Jerusalem, Tyre, Acre, and 
Naplousa, and the other lordships in chief of inferior 
extent, which composed the whole kingdom, owed and 
could furnish the services of no more than two thou- 
sand five hundred knights or mounted men-at-arms ; 
and their followers, with the contingent of the eccle- 
siastical and commercial communities, all of which 
were bound to render aid to the king on lower feudal 
tenures than the knights' fees, constituted a militia, 
for the greater part, probably, of archers on foot, not 
exceeding twelve thousand in number.''* It may be 



* Gibbon (ch. Iviii.) has fallen into an error in estimating the 
number of knights' fees in the whole kingdom of Jerusalem, exclu- 
sive of Tripoli, as six hundred and sixty-six, and appears to have 
confounded the contingent of the four royal cities, •which alone, ac- 
cording to the Assises, furnished that number, with the total knightly 
array of the realm. Pie cites Sanutus, indeed, (^Secreta FiJdium 



STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 



193 



inferred that the whole population of martial colonists 
from Europe could scarcely supply even this provi- 
sion, scanty as it was, for the public defence ; and the 
policy or the domestic Avants of the conquerors encou- 
raged the settlement in Palestine of the native Chris- 
tians of Syria and Armenia, and even of Mussulman 
tributaries for the cultivation of the soil and the sup- 
ply of mechanical labour. From the commingling of 
blood between the crusaders and all these people in 
the enfeebling climate of the East, was produced a 
spurious and effeminate race, contemptuously desig- 
nated by the writers of their age as Pidlani, or Pou- 
Jahhs, who had so utterly degenerated from the valour 
of their European fathers, as to fill the land without 
contributing to the strength of the state.* 

Cmcis, lib. iii.) as stating the number of knights' fees in each of 
the great baronies of Jaffa, Galilee, and Cassarea, at one hundred 
only, but the very superior authority of the Assises rates them 
expressly at five hundred each. Assises, c. 324-331. 
* Vide Du Cange, Gloss, v. Pullani. 




13 



194 



THE SECOND CRUSADE. 




sectio:n' n. 



ORIGIN OF THE ORDERS OF RELIGIOUS CHIVALRY. 

HE feudal army of the kingdom 
of Jerusalem, and the casual 
reinforcement of new crusaders 
from Europe, formed not the 
only defences of Palestine. 
The union of fanatical and 
martial ardour gave birth to 
two famous orders of religious 
chivalry, which were specially 
enrolled under the banners of 
the Cross; and the Christian cause in the East was 
long sustained by the emulous valour, though not 
unfrequently injured by the less worthy rivalry, of 
the Knights of the hospital of St. John and of the 
Temple of Solomon. The origin of both these re- 
markable institutions, which rose to celebrity by 





'' ^.M>llM^ l'''ffTTv. \i'^^i'Hlil,il,|»^ 



INSTITUTION OF THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN 
OF JERUSALEM. 



ORDERS OF RELIGIOUS CHIVALRY. J95 

martial achievement, may be traced to purposes 
simply of pious and practical benevolence. Long- 
before the era of the Crusades, some Italian merchants 
purchased a license from the Mussulman rulers of 
Jerusalem to found in that city an hospital, together 
with a chapel, which they dedicated to St. John the 
Eleemosynary — a canonized patriarch of Alexandria — 
for the relief and wayfaring entertainment of sick and 
poor pilgrims. By the alms of the wealthier Chris- 
tian visitants of the Sepulchre, and by charitable con- 
tributions which the merchants of Amalfi zealously 
collected in Italy, and as religiously transmitted to 
Jerusalem, the establishment w\as supported ; and its 
duties were performed by a few Benedictine monks, 
with the aid of such lay brethren among the 
European pilgrims as were induced to extend their 
penitential vows to a protracted residence in the Holy 
Land.'-' Perhaps through the habitual respect of the 
Mohammedan mind for charitable foundations, the 
Hospital of St. John might escape, but certainly it 
was suffered to outlive, the storms of Egyj^tian and 
Turkish persecution; and when Jerusalem fell into 
the hands of the crusaders, the house was joyfully 
opened for the reception and cure of the wounded 
warriors. The pious Godfrey and his companions 
were edified by the active and self-denying benevo- 
lence of the brethren of the hospital, who not only de- 

*Will.Tyr.p.934,935. 



196 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

voted themselves to the care of the suffermg, but 
were contented with the coarsest fare, while their 
patients were supplied with bread of the purest flour. 
By the grateful munificence of Godfrey himself, the 
hospital was endowed with an estate in Brabant, its 
first foreign possessions ; many of the crusaders, from 
religious motives, embraced its charitable service; 
and the society speedily acquired so much respect 
and importance, that the lay-members, separating 
from the monks of the Chapel of St. John the Almo- 
ner, formed themselves into a distinct community, 
assumed a religious habit, — a long black mantle with 
a white cross of eight points on the left breast — and 
placed their hospital under the higher patronage of 
St. John the Baptist. [A. d. 1113.] By the patriarch 
of Jerusalem, their triple monastic vows of obedience, 
chastity, and poverty, were accepted; and a bull of 
Pope Paschal II. confirmed the institution, received 
the fraternity under the special protection of the 
Holy See, and invested it with many valuable privi- 
leges.* 

The next transition of the Order to a military cha- 
racter is less accurately recorded; but the change 
may be referred in general terms to the reign of Bald- 
win II.: since the services in arms of its brethren 
under that prince are acknowledged in a papal buU.f 

* See the Statutes of the Order iu Vertot, Eist. dcs Chevaliers de 
St. Jean de Jerusalem. Appendix. 
t Ibid. 



ORDERS OF RELIGIOUS CHIVALRY. 197 

In fact, the constant jeopardy in which the Latin 
State was placed by the assaults of the Infidels, ad- 
mitted, as we have seen, of no exemption to any com- 
munity in the kingdom, whether lay or ecclesiastical, 
from actively contributing to the public defence; and 
the martial habits and feelings of the crusaders of 
knightly ranlc who had enrolled themselves in the 
fraternity of the Hospital, would naturally suggest the 
honourable preference of a personal to a deputed 
service. The revenues of the Order, by the increase 
of its endowments, were already far more than suf- 
ficient to supply the charitable uses of the Hospital ; 
and it was magnanimously resolved to devote the 
surplus to the defence of the state. The former 
soldiers of the Cross resumed their military, without 
discarding their religious garb and profession ; the 
union of chivalric and religious sentiment, however 
discordant in modern ideas, was equally congenial to 
the spirit of the age, and proper to the great cause of 
the Crusades; and thenceforth the banner and the 
battle-cry of the knights of St. John were seen and 
heard foremost and loudest in every encounter with 
the Paynim enemy. The government of the Order 
was vested in the grand-master and general council of 
the knights, all of whom were required to be of noble 
birth ; a distinct body of regular clergy was provided 
for the offices of rehgion ; and a third and inferior 
class of sergeants, or serving brethren, both swelled 
the martial array of the knightly fraternity, and dis- 



198 



THE SECOND CRUSADE. 




(Inind-Mtialrr (/ /V Knighift of Malta. 

cli.arged the civil duties of the hospital.* The re- 
nown which the order acquired in the fields of Pales- 
tine soon attracted the nobility from all parts of 
Europe to its standard ; admiration of both its pious 
and chivalric purposes multiplied, throughout the 
West, endowments of land and donations of money ; 



* Vertot iihi supra. 



ORDERS OF RELIGIOUS CHIVALRY. 199 




Grand- Marshal of the Knights of Malta. 

and the rents of nineteen thousand farms, adminis- 
tered by jDreceptories or commanderies, as the prin- 
cipal houses were termed, which the knights esta- 
bhshed in every Christian country, supplied a per- 
petual revenue to their hospital in Palestine, and 
served to maintain its regular military force."^' 



* Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 544. 



200 THE SECOND CKUSADE. 

When the Christians were driven from Palestine, 
the knights of St. John settled on the island of 
Cyprus, whence they were soon driven by the Turks. 
They then went to the Island of Rhodes. [1310.] 
From thence they were driven to Malta, which 
was given to them by Charles V. in 1530. Their 
position on this island has been retained to the 
present day, and they bear the name of Knights of 
Malta. 

The institution of the Order of the Temple of Solo- 
mon was of later date than the adoption of a military 
character by the friars of St. John; [A. u. 1118 ;] and 
the Templars in their pristine state of humility and 
poverty owed more obligations to the Hospitallers, by 
whom they were originally fed and clothed, than 
their successors, in the days of their pride and power, 
cared to acknowledge or strove to repay. The ori- 
ginal design of their association differed from that of 
the Hospital, in having united from the outset the 
martial with a charitable profession. Even after the 
conquest of the Holy Laud by the crusaders, the 
roads to Jerusalem from the ports and northern 
frontiers of Palestine continued to be infested by 
bands of Turks, who indulged at once their thirst ol" 
plunder and their hatred of the Christian name, by 
the robbery and murder of the numerous defenceless 
pilgrims from Europe. The dangers which beset these 
poor votaries to the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre 



202 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

from the cruelty of the Infidels, roused the pious com. 
passion and chivalric indignation of Geoffroy de St. 
Aldemar, Hugh de Payens, and other French knights 
in Palestine, who bound themselves mutually by oath 
to devote their lives to the relief and safe conduct of 
all pilgrims. As their association partook of a re- 
ligious character, they followed the example of the 
fraternity of the Hospital by assuming the monastic 
vows and garb; and when Baldwin I. marked his ap- 
probation of their purpose by assigning them part of 
his own palace for a residence at Jerusalem, the title 
which they adopted of the poor soldiery of Christ and 
of the Temple of Solomon, was suggested by the con- 
tiguity of their quarters to the site of that sacred 
edifice. The maintenance which they at first received 
from the charity of the Hospital of St. John was soon 
more independently provided by the respect which 
was won for their order throughout Christendom 
through the grateful report of the pilgrims; with the 
increase of their means and numbers they aspired to 
extend their humbler service of guarding the roads of 
Palestine to the more glorious adventure of offensive 
warfare against the Infidels; and, thenceforth, in 
wealth, privileges, and power, and in heroic enter- 
prise, the history of their rise differs little from that 
of the Hospitallers. The constitution of the two 
orders was similar; and the number of preceptories 
and estates possessed by the Templars in every king- 



204 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

dora of Europe/^ were immense sources of influence 
and opulence, second only in degree to those of the 
elder fraternity .f But in honourable estimation and 
martial renown, no superiority could with justice be 
claimed by either order; and admission into tlio 
ranks of both was sought with equal avidity by the 
flower of the European chivalry. In externals, the 
knights of the Temple were distinguished from their 
rivals by their use of a long white cloak or mantle, 
with a straight red cross on the left breast. The 
banner and seal of the order in the maturity of its 
splendour also bore a cross gules in a field argent : for 
its earlier and well-known device, presenting the 
singular emblem of two men on one horse, although 
intended by the pious humility of its founders to com- 
memorate the original poverty of the brotherhood, 
was not long permitted to survive the condition which 
it had expressed.J 

* In England, both orders early acquired laru'C possessions. The 
principal preceptory of each was established in London : that of the 
Hospitallers at Clcrkenwell, and of the Templars in Ilolborn, whence 
it was removed into Fleet Street. Stow, lib. iv. 02. Dudgale, 
Origines Jurld. c. 57. 

f Both Hospitallers and Templars were prohibited from possessing 
any private property ; but their vow of poverty, by a convenient 
interpretation, was only personal, and did not extend to their enjoy- 
ing in common the enormous wealth of their orders. 

J For the rise of the Order of Templars, see jKf.s.si/», the twelfth 
book of William of Tyre. Also Knyghton, p. 2382, Brompton, p. 
1008, and Matt. Paris {IHst. Minor.) p. 410, &c. 



FALL OF EDESSA. 



205 




SECTIOJ^ m. 

FALL OF EDESSA.— THE FREACHING OF THE SECOND 
CRUSADE. 




,, URING the reign of Bald- 
win II. the safety and ex- 
tension of the kingdom of 
Palestine were largely in- 
debted to the prowess of 
the knights of the Hospital 
and Temple; and before 
the decease of that mo- 
narch, the two orders had 
become the most powerful champions of the Latin 



206 TlIK SECOND CRUSADE. 

power. As Baldwin II. had no sons, he obtained the 
consent of his nobles and prelates to nominate, as his 
successor, Foulques, Count of Anjou, whom he had 
married to his eldest daughter Melisinda. [a. d. 1131.] 
In his 3'outh, Foulques had visited Palestine as a cru- 
sader, at the head of one hundred knights and men-at- 
arms, and had left so favourable an opinion of his chi- 
valric qualities on the mind of Baldwin that, nine 
years afterward, when he had become a widower, the 
king invited him from France to receive the hand of 
the princess. Dazzled by the prospect of a royal 
alliance and a matrimonial crow^n, the Count aban- 
doned his extensive French fiefs to his son;"'' and on 
his arrival in the Holy Land, his nuptials with Me- 
lisinda were solemnized, and he Avas immediately 
acknowledged as the heir to the throne. The death 
of Baldw^in, which shortly ensued, gave him the undis- 



* That son was Geoffroy Plantagenet, the husband of the Empress 
Matilda, and father of Henry II. It is strange that William of 
Tyre, the eulogist of Foulques, should represent him as sixty years of 
age when he arrived in Palestine for the second time to celebrate h'\e. 
nuptials with Melisinda; for the learned Benedictine authors of 
V Art de verifier les Dates (Article, Comtes d' Anjou) prove that ho 
was born only A. D. 1092; and his reign in Palestine commenced 
A. D. 1131. His family had long been famous for their passion of 
making pilgrimages to the Holy Land; and one of them, who 
travelled thither before the era of the Crusades, having bound hi.i 
servants by oath to do whatsoever he should ref|uire, compelled them 
publicly to scourge his naked back before the altar of the Sepulchre, 
while in penitential cries he implored the pardon of Heaven for his 
sins. Malmsbury, p. 807. 



FALL OF EDESSA. 207 

puted possession of the crown; and, during a reign of 
thirteen years, Foulques, without performing any bril- 
liant achievement, sufficiently emulated the courage 
and virtues of his predecessors in the defence and 
government of the kingdom. His decease left the 
state in the hands of his widow Melisinda, and their 
son Baldwin III., then only thirteen years old, who 
were crowned together; and it w^as soon after the 
martial sceptre of the house of Bouillon had thus de- 
volved upon a woman and a minor, [A. d. 1144,] that 
the Christian power in the East received the first dis- 
astrous shock from the Mussulman arms. Since the 
death of Joscelyn de Courtenay, the defence of the 
principality of Edessa had been feebly sustained by 
his son, who inherited neither his valour nor ability. 
But its safety was more fatally compromised by the 
selfish indifference or still more criminal treachery of 
the princes of Antioch, who coolly witnessed the dan- 
ger of a state which, by its position beyond the 
Euphrates, formed the great advanced post of the 
Latin settlements in Syria; and which, therefore, 
every motive of honour and policy should have im- 
pelled them to succour. Profiting by the disunion of 
the Christians, Zenghi, the Turkish Emir of Mosul or 
Aleppo, whose martial activity and skill had already 
rendered his power formidable during the life of 
Joscelyn de Courtenay, suddenly entered the State of 
Edessa with an overwhelming force ; laid siege to its 
capital; and, before the levies of the kingdom of 



208 TUE SECOND CRUSADE. 

Jerusalem could march to its relief, took the city by 
storm/'' 

The intelligence of the fall of Edessa startled the 
Christian residents in Palestine from lethargic indif- 
ference to an alarming discovery of the renovation of 
the Turkish power on that frontier; [a. d. 1145 ;] and 
the first burst of shame and consternation excited 
among the guardians of the Ploly Land by the dis- 
graceful loss and impending danger, was naturally fol- 
lowed by earnest solicitations for succour from Europe. 
Throughout every country of Western Christendom, 
the appeal was received with a general enthusiasm 
little inferior to that which, half a century before, had 
stimulated the great design of the first Crusade. The 
martial and religious feelings of Europe were provoked 
to indignation by the report of the triumph of the 
infidels; and this universal spirit was already pre- 
pared for a second mighty efibrt of fanaticism, when 
it was roused into action by the master mind of the 
age. [114G.] The report of the calamity which 
had befallen, and of the increasing perils which threat- 
ened, the Christian cause in Palestine, affected his 
ardent temper with powerful emotions of religious 
zeal ; and his resolution to preach a new Crusade was 
supported by the private friendship and the public 
wishes of Pope Eugenius III., as well as by the re- 

t Will. Tyr. p. 844-893. For the exploits of Zenghi, sec also De 
Guignes, Hist. G6ii. c/es Huns, vol. ii. lib. xiii., and the Arabic writers 
therein abridged. 



FALL OF EDESSA. 209 

spect and influence which his virtues and talents had 
deservedly acquired throughout Europe. Not less 
than the distinguished part which he had already 
filled in ecclesiastical affairs, do the nobility of 
his birth, the uniform sanctity of his life, and the 
really great attainments of his genius and learning, 
place him at an immeasurable height of personal dig- 
nity above the obscure and ignorant fanatic who had 
first lighted up the flame which he now rekindled. 
But St. Bernard could only emulate the successful 
mission, though he might slight the memory,'-' of the 
Hermit Peter; the impassioned oratory of the pro- 
found theologian could not produce more astonishing 
results than the rude eloquence of the Solitary of 
Amiens ; and, in the relation of its effects, the preach- 
ing of the second Crusade forms but a copy of that 
of the first. 

Louis VII. of France, by his firmness in repressing 
the rebellious feuds of his turbulent vassals, had se- 
curely established the royal authority ; and the tran- 
quil condition of his kingdom left him at liberty to 
gratify, in a foreign and sacred enterprise, the thirst 
of glorious adventure natural to a young and success- 

* In one of his extant epistles, St. Bernard speaks contemptu- 
ously of his predecessor the Hermit, as vir quidam, Petrus nomine, 
cujus et vos, (ni fallor,^ ssepe. mentionem audistis, &c.; (a certain man, 
by name Peter, of whom, if I mistake not, ye have often heard men- 
tion made ;) and attributes to his misconduct the destruction of the 
people in the first Crusade. Opera Sancti Bernardi, Ep. 863. Ed. 

Mabillon, Venet. A. D. 1750. 

14 



210 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

ful monarch. But even the strong desire of chival- 
rous achievement was secondary in the mind of this 
religious prince to motives of piety, however mis- 
taken ; and feelings of deeply cherished remorse for 
his involuntary share in the horrible catastrophe at 
Vitry, and of less reasonable compunction for a long 
disregard of the papal anathemas, powerfully impelled 
Louis to offer" that atonement, which a false supersti- 
tion deemed most acceptable to Heaven, by embarking 
in the great warfare against the infidel assailants of 
the Holy Land. When, therefore, St. Bernard an- 
nounced his mission, it was eagerly promoted by the 
French king ; and, in the great assembly of his nobles 
and people which he convoked at Vezelay, the same 
spectacle was repeated, which had been witnessed at 
the Council of Clermont before the first Crusade. 
From the innumerable multitudes which filled the 
plain and covered the neighbouring heights of Vezelay 
to their summit, cries of " The cross, the cross ! it is 
the will of God !" rent the air and interrupted the 
vehement appeal of the preacher ; and, before the 
assembly broke up, Louis himself, with his queen, the 
too famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, and a host of the 
nobility and knighthood of his realm, had been signed 
with the sacred emblem of their vows. From France, 
St. Bernard with indefatigable zeal proceeded into 
Germany ; [March 31, 1146 ;] and his course from 
the Rhine to the Danube, and from the recesses of the 
Swiss mountains to the plains of Northern Italy, was 




2:-^^^'- ^ 







FALL OF EDESSA. 



211 




Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. 



everywhere signalized by the same successful exertions 
of his fervid zeal and impetuous eloquence. At his 
soul-stirring exhortations, the great feudatory princes 
of Bavaria, Bohemia, Carinthia, Piedmont, and Styria, 
with a crowd of inferior chieftains, assumed the cross ; 
and the conversion of the Emperor Conrad III., after 
some struggle between the sense of political interest 
and of religious duty, completed the triumph of the 
pious orator.''' 

* Odo de Diagolo, (apud Bouquet, Recueil des Hist. I^rangois,} 
vol. xii. 91-93. Otto Frisingensis, (apud Muratori, Script. Rer. 
Ital.) vol. vi. c. 37. These two writers, the first a Frenchman, and 
the latter a German, who himself accompanied the emperor Conrad 
to Palestine, form — together with the anonymous author of the 



212 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

The personal motives of St. Bernard were disinte- 
rested, pure, and elevated ; his zeal was equally free 
from all alloy of gross fanaticism, selfish ambition, or 
worldly vanity ; and its mistaken direction was the 
only error which he shared with the most virtuous 
and devout of his contemporaries. But the intrinsic 
greatness of his mind is not the less perceptible 
through this fatal delusion ; and in nothing is his 
superiority to the spirit of the age in which he lived 
more conspicuous, than in the wisdom and humanity 
which tempered his enthusiasm. The first of these 
qualities was signally displayed in his refusal to ac- 
cept the command of the intended expedition to the 
Holy Land, as a station which he felt and confessed 
his own unfitness to fill from want of martial expe- 
rience and bodily health. His humane exertions to 
avert from the Jews in France a repetition of the hor- 
rid persecution which their fathers had suffered from 
the fanaticism of the first crusaders, attest his libe- 
rality, and were extended to the protection of that 
unhappy people, with earnest and consistent benevo- 
lence, in Germany and other countries. He sternly 
silenced, by the exertion of his delegated authority 
from the pope, the preaching of a fanatical German 
monk, who had endeavoured to provoke a general 
massacre of the Jews; and his injunctions in circular 

Gesta Inidovici Regis YII. (in Duchesne, vol. iv.) — our chief con- 
temporary authorities for the transactions of their respective country- 
men in the second Crusade. 



FALL OF EDESSA. 211 

letters to the crusaders to abstain equally from the 
murder and spoliation of an unoffending people, 
breathe the genuine Christian precepts of mercy and 
justice. The doctrines thus inculcated, indeed, were 
so new to his age, that fully to appreciate the virtu- 
ous and truly pious efforts of St. Bernard in his labour 
of charity, they must be contrasted with the mon- 
strous opinion then prevalent among all orders of 
society, that to shed the blood and despoil the wealth 
of infidels was an allowable vengeance, and even a 
positive duty, against the enemies of God. The prac- 
tical application of this inhuman and impious belief 
to the plunder and slaughter of a rich, usurious, and 
defenceless race, offered too tempting a prey to the 
cupidity of the bigoted populace and the yet more 
malignant instigation of numerous debtors, to be 
wholly averted even by the eloquent and powerful 
denunciations of the preacher whose voice had 
awakened all Europe to arms. Notwithstanding 
the anathemas of St. Bernard, the Jews were in many 
places robbed and murdered ; and in Germany espe- 
cially they were saved from extermination only by 
the imperial protection.* 

* Pfeffel, Hist, d' AUemagne, vol. i. 309. 




214 



THE SECOND CRUSADE. 




**»v3;*<r'vv-v 



SECTION rv. 

LOUIS VII. AND CONRAD III. IN PALESTINE. 




HE presence of Louis YII. 
and of the Emj^eror Conrad 
III. — the first great monarchs 
of the West who had as- 
sumed the cross — seemed to 
invest the great enterprise in 
which tliey had engaged with 
a dignity superior even to that of the former Cru- 
.sade. The armies which the two sovereigns prepared 
to lead to tlie relief of Palestine comprised the na- 
tional chivalry of France and Germany, with nume- 
rous auxiliaries from England'"' and Italy j and, if the 

* The recent cessation of the civil wars of Stephen's reign in- 
duced many of the English nobility to assume the cross, and among 



LOUIS VII. AND CONRAD III. 215 

statements of contemporary writers may be credited, 
these united forces equalled in number the prodigious 
hosts of the first holy war. The emperor and the 
king were each at the head of seventy thousand mailed 
cavalry; their heavily armed infantry exceeded two 
hundred and fifty thousand; and the clergy, other 
defenceless pilgrims, camp-followers, women, and chil- 
dren, might swell the aggregate of the crusading mul- 
titudes to nearly a million of souls. ^' From Ratisbon 
and Mayence, their places of rendezvous, both the 
German and French armies successively pursued the 
same route through Hungary and Bulgaria to Con- 
stantinople, which had been traversed by their prede- 
cessors in the first Crusade. Manuel Comnenus, 
grandson of Alexius, was now on the Byzantine 
throne ; but the timid and treacherous policy of that 
court was unchangeable ; and, in the apparent friend- 
ship and secret hostility with which the Greek empe- 
ror alternately assisted and harassed the march of the 
crusaders, he faithfully copied the example of his 
ancestor. He engaged by treaty that they should 
be received hospitably, and supplied with provisions 
upon equitable terms; yet, in the bread which his 

them Roger de Mowbray and William de Warenne. Ricardus Ha- 
gulst. p. 275, 276. Huntingdon, p. 394, also says that multi de 
gente Anglorum, (many Englishmen,) accompanied the French host: 
and his account is curiously confirmed by the Byzantine chronicler 
Cinnamus, p. 29. 

* Will. Tyr. p. 902. Cinnamus, p. 31, and the authorities cited 
in Du Cange, (^ad Cmnamtim.) 



216 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

subjects sold to them, poisonous ingredients were fre- 
quently mingled ; base coin was issued expressly from 
the imperial mint to defraud the strangers in the 
interchange of trade ; the sick whom the crusading 
hosts were obliged to leave behind on their march 
were often murdered; their stragglers were cut off; 
the bridges on their route were broken down ; their 
columns were galled with flights of arrows from am- 
bush in every forest ; and all the impediments of a 
desultory though unavowed warfare were cowardly 
opposed to their progress. When, therefore, the Ger- 
man army thus harassed arrived before the walls of 
Constantinople, Conrad, though he abstained from hos- 
tile retaliation, indignantly refused an interview with 
the Greek emperor, and, crossing the Bosphorus, pur- 
sued his march through Asia Minor. But the French 
king, on his arrival at the Byzantine capital, accepted 
the apologies and entertainment of Manuel, and suf- 
fered himself to be beguiled by the blandishments of 
his perfidious host, until he was roused from inaction 
by the appalling intelligence of the destruction of the 
German army.'=' 

In the march through Asia Minor, the Emperor 
Conrad was betrayed by his Greek guides into the 
hands of the Sultan of Iconium, who had assembled 
immense hordes of Turcomans to oppose his passage. 
While purposely misled into the most dangerous 

* Will. Tyr. p. 901-903. Cinnamus, p. 30-32. 



LOUIS VII. AND CONRAD III. 



217 




Conrad III. 

mountain passes of Lycaonia, the Germans were sud- 
denly attacked on all sides ; and the heavily armed 
cavalry were unable either to reach their more 
lightly equipped assailants on the heights, or to pro- 
tect the defenceless crowd of footmen from the 
Turkish arrows. By a desperate effort Conrad suc- 
ceeded, indeed, with a portion of his horse, in cutting 
a retreat through the Mussulman hordes : but he 
was compelled to abandon the infantry and unarmed 
pilgrims to their fate ; and nine-tenths of the whole 
German host are computed to have been destroyed by 
the shafts and cimeters of the infidels, or to have 
perished of hunger and thirst in this calamitous ex- 
pedition. When Conrad, with the remnant of his 
followers, had effected his retreat to Nice, where the 
French king, after crossing the Bosphorus, had esta- 



218 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

blished his camp, no doubt was left of the foul 
treacliery of Manuel, who had not only delayed the 
advance of Louis by false reports of the success of his 
German confederates, but was also found to have 
maintained an intelligence with the Sultan of Iconium. 
As the Greek emperor is charged with this guilt, not 
merely by the Latin writers, but on the contemporary 
testimony of one of his own subjects,''' some praise is 
due to the magnanimous or prudent forbearance which 
induced the crusading monarchs to sacrifice every 
natural impulse of vengeance, to the fulfilment of the 
sacred objects of their enterprise. Now advancing in 
concert through Asia Minor, but turning aside from 
the former route of the crusaders to the sea-coast of 
Lydia, Conrad and Louis reached Ephesus with their 
forces; but there the destitution of equipments for a 
longer march, to which his Germans had been re- 
duced by their defeat, obliged Conrad to transjDort 
them by sea to Palestine; and the French army 
alone resumed its route by land. On the banks of 
the Meander, Louis and his chivalry encountered and 
overthrew the Turkish hosts with so tremendous a 
slaughter, that piles of Mussulman bones in the next 
age still whitened the scene of destruction. But the 
confidence inspired by this victory served only to lure 
on the negligent crusaders to their ruin. Li their 
continued march, the vanguard had already passed 

* Nicetas, p. 33. 



LOUIS VII. AND CONRAD III. 



219 




Louis VII. defending himself against (he Turks. 

the mountains between Pisidia and Phrjgia, when the 
rereward commanded by Louis in person, while en- 
tangled in the defiles, was suddenly assailed by innu- 
merable swarms of Turks, who, covering the sur- 
rounding precipices, from thence, with fragments of 
rock, crushed and hurled whole squadrons of the 
French gens-d'armerie into the yawning gulfs below. 
The surprise was so complete and dreadful, that the 
whole rearguard was routed and destroyed before 
order could be restored; and the king himself, after 
performing prodigies of valour, was saved only, under 
favour of the darkness, by climbing a tree, and with 
difficulty escaped, almost unattended, to the camp of 
the vanguard. After this disaster, the hope of pene- 



220 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

trating into Syria by land was abandoned ; the sea- 
coast was again sought; and the army reached the 
port of Attalia in Pamphylia. There, after incurring 
new horrors and losses from famine and disease, the 
king succeeded in procuring some Greek vessels to 
transport his bands of nobles and knights to Antioch : 
but he was relunctantly compelled, by the want of 
sufficient shipping, to abandon the inferior crowd of 
infantry and pilgrims on the shore. After his de- 
parture, the guard which he had left for their pro- 
tection, proved insufficient to resist the incessant 
attacks of the Turks; the people of Attalia not only 
shut the gates of the city against them, but mas- 
sacred the defenceless sick and wounded; and the 
whole wretched multitude perished, either by the 
swords of the infidels, or the more unnatural cruelty 
of the perfidious Greeks.* 

When the German emperor and the French king 
had at last reached the shores of Palestine by sea, 
even the shattered remnants of their hosts supplied so 
considerable a reinforcement to the Christian power 
in Palestine, that in a general council at Acre, whither 
the two monarchs repaired to meet the king of Jeru- 
salem and his barons, it was resolved to undertake 
some enterprise worthy of the imperial and royal dig- 
nity. But though the recovery of the principality of 
Edessa had formed the original design of the Crusade, 



* Will. Tyr p. 903-006. Gcsta Ludovici, p. 395400 Nicetas, p. 
33-37. 



LOUIS VII. AND CONRAD VII. 



22] 




that object was now either abandoned from conviction 
of the difficulties attending so distant an expedition, 
or postponed to more pressing considerations of imme- 
diate danger or local interest. The vicinity of 
Damascus rendered the continued possession of that 
important place by the infidels more perilous to the 
safety of the Latin kingdom than the loss of the 
remoter city of Edessa; and the three sovereigns of 



222 THE SECOND CRUSADE. 

Germany, France, and Jerusalem, led their national 
chivalry and the Knights of St. John and the Temple, 
to the siege of that great stronghold of the Turkish 
power in Syria. But Damascus was strongly for- 
tified and skilfully defended; the valour of the Chris- 
tians was misdirected by ignorance, or paralyzed by 
discord and treason; and, after a miserable failure, 
variously attributed to all these causes, the crusading 
army withdrew from the walls, and retreated in 
shame and dishonour to Jerusalem. Thence, in de- 
spair of the eflScacy of further exertions, Conrad and 
Louis, with an interval of a year between their 
several departures, both returned to Europe with the 
broken array of the chivalry ; and the Christian cause 
in Palestine was again deserted, save by the scanty 
bands but enduring courage of its habitual defenders.'^ 
Such was the abortive issue of the second Crusade. 
The mightiest efforts of the congregated force of Eu- 
rope had been exhausted in Asia Minor; [a. d. 1149;] 
and the presence of the greatest monarchs of Christen- 
dom in Palestine had served only to expose the weak- 
ness of their vaunted power to the eyes of the tri- 
umphant infidels. The sacrifice of the myriads of 
their followers had absolutely failed to achieve a sin- 
gle advantage for the cause in which two great armies 
had perished ; and, after the fruitless hopes of succour 
which had been excited by their approach, and, disap- 

* Will. Tyr. p. 90G-914. Gesta Ludovici, p. 410-409. Otto Fris. 
c. 40-47, &c. 



LOUIS VII. AND CONRAD III. 



223 



pointed by their failure, the guardians of the Holy 
Sepulchre were abandoned to sustain the tempest of 
Mussulman warfare with diminished confidence and 
increasing danger. Meanwhile, from the distant banks 
of the Euphrates, the gathering power which had 
already swept away the Christian bulwark of Edessa, 
and was destined eventually to overwhelm the Latin 
kingdom of Palestine, was continually enlarged with 
portentous vigour. Before the death of Zenghi, the 
victorious Emir or Atabec of Aleppo, his dominions 
had already swelled into a considerable empire ; and, 
by its still further extension under his son, the great 
Noureddin, who added the sovereignty of Damascus 
to that of Aleppo, and consolidated the Mussulman 
power in Syria under a single ruler, the frontiers of 
the Latin states became completely enveloped by the 
conquests of this formidable enemy. 




224 



TT1F TTirT?D rKT'^ADE. 



S--^:-.-.^fr^' 




A?i Arab Encampmcnl. 

CHAPTER m. 

%\t ®I]ir& .6rus;iiJt. 

SECTION I.— THE RISE OF SALADIN. 




OTWITHSTANDING 

the failure of the second 
Crusade, and the increas- 
ing power of the Turks, 
Baldwin III., supported 
by the feudal array of his 
kingdom, and the knights 
of the military orders, 
continued throughout the 
remainder of his reign 
to uphold the Christian 



RISE OF SALADIN. 225 

cause in Palestine with courage and energy. In order 
to protect the northern frontiers of the Latin states 
from the designs of Noureddin, the king stationed 
himself at Antioch ; and, though unable to save the 
remnant of the Edessene territory, he succeeded in 
rescuing the Christian garrisons and inhabitants under 
a safe escort from the impending horrors of Turkish 
slavery. Being recalled from Antioch to repel a new 
invasion, in which the troops of Noureddin from Da- 
mascus had penetrated to the gates of Jerusalem, he 
came up with the infidels, Mdio had already been com- 
pelled to retreat by the bravery of the military Or- 
ders ; and inflicted on them, near Jericho, so total a 
defeat that the whole Turkish host was either slaugh- 
tered or drowned in the waters of the Jordan. On 
the southern frontiers of Palestine, the arms of the 
Christian prince were subsequently still more success- 
ful against the Egyptian Mussulmans ; and his reduc- 
tion of the important city of Ascalon, after an obstinate 
siege, added a new possession and bulwark to the king- 
dom of Jerusalem, [a. d. 1153.] By these exploits, and 
by the generous spirit with which he devoted his last 
years to the active defence of his people, Baldwin re- 
deemed the reproach of some irregularities of personal 
conduct which had clouded his youth ; without any 
high degree of ability, his character was graced by many 
noble and chivalric qualities;* and he died respected 



* Will. Tyr. p. 915-954. De Guignes, Ijb. xiii. 
15 



226 THE TUIRD CRUSADE. 

even by his infidel enemies, and deeply lamented by 
his own subjects. As he left no children, he was 
succeeded by his brother Almeric, whose equal medi- 
ocrity of talent was unrelieved by the same virtues, 
and whose temper presented an unpleasing contrast 
of avarice and overweening ambition, [a. d. 11G2.] 
By these passions, the new king, disregarding the 
pressure of nearer and more imminent danger from 
the power of Noureddin, was tempted to engage in 
repeated projects for the distant conquest of Egypt, 
which, as fruitlessly exhausting the strength of the 
Christian kingdom, may be numbered among the 
accelerating causes of its downfliU. 

Obeying the usual vicissitudes of the Saracen 
dynasties, the Fatimite Khalifs of Egj-pt had for 
many generations sunken into abject slavery to their 
own vizirs ; and at the period before us, the supreme 
authority in the seraglio of Cairo was disputed be- 
tween two powerful rivals, Shawer and Dargham. 
The latter prevailing, Shawer fled to the court of 
Noureddin; and that prince, glad of any occasion for 
extending his influence, openly protected the fugitive, 
and despatched a body of troops under Shiracouch, the 
most famous of his Turcoman generals, into Egypt, to 
reinstate him in the vizirship. The expedition was 
successful; Dargham was slain in battle; but Shawer, 
in nominally recovering his power over the helpless 
Khalif of Egypt, found that he was only himself a 
slave to the lieutenant of Noureddin. To rid himself 



EISE OF SALADIN. 227 

of this new yoke, the Egyptian vizir had recourse to 
the king of Jerusalem ; and Ahneric, who had ah-eady 
engaged in hostilities to exact a tribute from Egypt, 
eagerly received his overtures. The power of Nou- 
reddin was far superior to that of the Frankisli 
monarch : but the proximity of Palestine to Egypt 
enabled the Christian forces to reach Cairo by a direct 
march from their own frontiers; while from Damascus 
the interposition of the Latin states would oblige the 
Turkish cavalry to make a long circuit over the burn- 
ing deserts of Arabia. This advantage of situation 
made it easy for the king of Jerusalem, on the invi- 
tation of Shawer, to march an army into Egypt, and 
to besiege Shiracouch in Pelusium, before Noureddin 
was able to succour his lieutenant. After a lono; and 
gallant defence, the Turkish general was compelled to 
capitulate: but Noureddin meanwhile had made a 
formidable diversion by pouring his troops into the 
territory of Antioch; and Almeric, thus prevented 
from reaping the fruits of his victory, returned by 
rapid marches to the defence of the Latin state. At 
his approach, Noureddin made an artful demonstration 
of retiring : but his retreat was only the prelude to a 
sudden attack upon the exulting and negligent forces 
of Almeric ; and the Christians, before they could re- 
cover from their surprise, were routed near Artesia 
with immense loss. [A. d. 1163.] After this ominous 
event, the severest defeat in the open field which the 
Christian forces in Palestine had sustained since their 



'I. ; 




RISE OF SALADIN. 229 

conquest of Jerusalem, Noureddin was at leisure to 
resume his designs upon Egypt; and the veteran 
Shiracouch was ordered to lead a second and more 
numerous army into that country. But Almeric, 
stimulated by ambition and avarice, had made such 
vigorous efforts to repair the disaster of Artesia, that 
he again appeared on the Egyptian frontiers with a 
chosen body of the Christian chivalry, before Shira- 
couch had reached the banks of the Nile. The Turk- 
ish army was exhausted by a calamitous march across 
the desert; the Christian knights were fresh and 
vigorous, and their valour and energy, though feebly 
supported by their Egyptian allies, triumphed over 
the superior military skill of Shiracouch. After a 
campaign in which the ability of the Turkish general 
was" admirably displayed, he was a second time 
obliged to conclude a capitulation with Almeric and 
the Vizir Shawer, by which he engaged to evacuate 
Egypt; [A. D. 1167;] and both the Christian and 
Turkish armies returned to their own states.* 

The cupidity of the king of Jerusalem was, how- 
ever, after so successful an expedition, more than ever 
attracted by the wealth and defenceless condition of 
Egypt; and obtaining, through a family alliance 
which he had at this epoch concluded with the Greek 
emperor, Manuel Comnenus, the promised aid of the 
Byzantine navy, he resolved to attempt the total su}> 

* Will. Tyr. p. 955-974. De Guignes, lib. xiii. 



230 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

jugation of the country wliich he had protected from 
the Turks. A pretence for this aggression was found 
or framed on the report of a secret negotiation be- 
tween the Vizir Shawer and Noureddin ; and Ahneric, 
drawing together one of the most numerous and best 
appointed armies which had ever been assembled 
under the Christian banners in Palestine, suddenly 
crossed the Egyptian frontiers, attacked Pelusium, 
sacked that city with horrible cruelty, and from 
thence advanced to the gates of Cairo. But his per- 
fidy and the ferocious conduct of his followers roused 
the unwarlike Egyptians to desperation; and while 
the people of Cairo prepared for a vigorous defence, 
and implored the distant aid of their ancient Turkish 
enemies for their deliverance, the Vizir Shawer baited 
the avarice of the king of Jerusalem by the gift of an 
hundred thousand pieces of gold, and the promise of 
nine times that amount as the price of peace. The 
greedy Almeric suffered himself to be amused by 
these negotiations, until Shiracouch with a large army 
appeared on the frontiers, and the crafty vizir, then 
throwing off the mask, joined the Turks with his 
troops, and recommenced hostilities. The Christian 
army was now unable to cope vvith the united forces 
of the Egyptian and Syrian Moslems ; the Greek em- 
peror had failed in rendering the promised co-opera- 
tion of his navy; and the king of Jerusalem closed 
his iniquitous scheme of conquest by a disgraceful re- 
treat into Palestine. But the Egyptian vizir imme- 



RISE OF SALADIN. 



231 




Shiracouch. 



diately fell a victim to his own tortuous policy. For, 
now jealous of the influence which the victorious 
Turk had acquired over the feeble mind of the Khalif? 
he conspired against the life of so dangerous a rival; 
and Shiracouch, anticipating his treachery, caused 
him to be seized and put to death, and himself to be 
invested with the dignity of vizir*. 



* Will. Tyr. p. 974-980. 



232 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

The new ruler of Egypt survived his elevation only 
two months ; and his death prepared the rise of his 
nephew, the famous Sallah-u-deen or Saladin. This 
scourge of the Christian fortunes in Palestine had 
attended his uncle in all his expeditions into Egypt ; 
and in the second of those campaigns had particularly 
distinguished himself by a skilful and resolute, though 
unsuccessful, defence of Alexandria. But the politi- 
cal genius and ambition of the young Curdish chief- 
tain had remained concealed from the world, and, per- 
haps, from himself, in the pursuit of licentious plea- 
sures ; and, on the death of Shiracouch, when the 
haughty pretensions of elder leaders to the vizirship 
alarmed the jealousy of the feeble Khalif of Egypt, 
the aj)parent weakness of Saladin induced that sove- 
reign to nominate him to the vacant dignity. If the 
disgust and disaffection of the disappointed emirs at 
first rendered Saladin the powerless servant of the 
khalif, his skilful use of the royal treasures soon pur- 
chased for him the return, and Avon the affections of 
his former rivals ; and the new vizir, from the minis- 
ter, easily became the master of the khalif, and the 
real lord of Egypt. A single bold measure, favoured 
by the mortal illness of the Khalif Adhed, was now 
sufficient to complete the Turkish conquest of that 
country. One of the followers of Saladin, taking pos- 
session of the principal pulpit of Cairo, substituted 
the name of the Khalif of Bagdad for that of the 
Egyptian sovereign in the public prayers, as the true 



RISE OF SALADIN. 233 

commander of the fliithful ; the people, from indiffer- 
ence or fear, silently acquiesced in the change ; and 
the green emblems of the sect of Ali were everywhere 
displaced by the black ensigns of the Abassidan tenets. 
The natural death of Adhed, who expired in ignorance 
of the event, in a few days completed this great politi- 
cal and religious revolution, by w^liich the Fatimite 
dynasty of Egypt was extinguished, and that country, 
after a schism of two centuries, was restored to the 
orthodox communion of Islamism. The Abassidan 
Khalif of Bagdad, whose dignity as the spiritual chief 
of that faith was still revered, and whose nominal 
functions of temporal sovereignty were dictated by his 
Turkish masters, was made to sanctify the usurpation 
of Saladin, as the vizir of the Sultan of Damascus in 
Egypt ; and, as long as Noureddin lived, the youthful 
conqueror was overawed by his power, and, though 
not without some symptoms of impatience, affected a 
duteous submission to his will. But, when the death 
of the sultan* released him from the necessity of fur- 

* The character of Noureddin is among the brightest in Moham- 
medan history ; for political ability and valour were the least of his 
great qualities. A Mussulman writer declares that the catalogue 
of his virtues would fill a volume; and among these, his justice, cle- 
mency, and piety extorted a still stronger testimony even from his 
Christian foes, who had sufficient reason to fear and detest so powerful 
and deadly an enemy. Thus William of Tyre, after numbering him 
among the bitterest persecutors of the Christian name and faith, adds, 
■princeps tamen Justus, vafcr, pjrovidns, et secundum gentls suse tra- 
ditiones rcligiosus. (Nevertheless he was a just, crafty, and far-see- 
ing prince, and religious according to the traditions of his race.) A 



234 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

ther dissimulation, Salaclin threw off the mask ; gra- 
dually extended his influence and dominion over Syria 
and parts of Arabia and Armenia ; and deposing the 
young and helpless sons of Noureddin, finally united 
the Mussulman states from the Nile to the Tigris 
under his single empire." [a. d. 1173.] 

By every motive of religion and policy, the new 
and puissant lord of Syria and Egypt was urged to 
attempt the expulsion of the detested enemies of his 
faith from the intervening territory of Palestine ; hut 
he was long obliged to suspend his ultimate designs 
against the Christians, by the more immediate neces- 
sity of consolidating his dominion over his Mussulman 
opponents. Meanwhile, the Latin kingdom, through 
its intestine disorders, was fast falling into a state of 
weakness, which promised to deliver it an easy prey 
to so vigorous an assailant. On the death of Almeric, 
which shortly followed that of Noureddin, the crown 



trait of the frugal and rigid integrity with which he abstained from 
applying the public treasures to his domestic uses, has often been 
repeated from the pages of D'Herbelot. To some expensive request 
from the best beloved of his wives, this absolute lord of the gorgeous 
East would only reply, " Alas ! I fear God, and am no more than 
the treasurer of his people. Their wealth I cannot appropriate ; but 
three shops in the city of Hems are yet my own, and those you m:iy 
take, for those alone can I give." Bihliothbque Oricntalc, Art. 
Noureddin. 

» Will. Tyr. p. 980-995. Bih. Orient. Art. Salahrddin. Also 
Bohadin, Vita Sahidiniy (Schultens,) p. 1-10. Abulfcda, (in Ex- 
cerpt Schultens,) p. 1-13. De Guignes, lib. xiii. (vol. ii. p. 201- 
211.) 



RISE OF SALADIN. 235 

of Jerusalem devolved on his son, Baldwin IV.; but 
this prince was afflicted with leprosy, and felt himself 
so unequal to the toils of government, that he com- 
mitted the regency of the kingdom to his sister 
Sybilla and her second husband Guy de Lusignan. 
[A. D. 1173,] a French knight,* to whom she had 
given her hand after the death of her first lord, a 
Count of Montferrat. But Lusignan was destitute 
both of talent and courage ; his despicable character 
and unmerited elevation provoked the scorn and in- 
sulted the pride of the barons of Palestine ; their dis- 
affection was fomented by the intrigues of Raymond 
II., Count of Tripoli, a man himself capable of every 
perfidy; and the whole kingdom w^as distracted by 
the selfish conflict of factions. To terminate their 
struggle, the royal leper was at length compelled to 
make a new settlement of his realm, by which, abdi- 
cating the crown in favour of his infant nephew, Bald- 
win v., the son of Sybilla by her first husband, he 
committed the person of his young successor to the 



* Lusignan was a native, or at least a subject, of the French do- 
mains of Henry II. of England, who banished him for the treacherous 
murder of the Earl of Salisbury, on which he assumed the cross, the 
usual resource of malefactors, and came to seek his fortune in Pales- 
tine. So contemptible was the estimation in which he was held even 
by his own kindred, that when his brother heard of his subsequent 
elevation to the throne of Jerusalem, he ironically exclaimed, 
" Surely, since the barons of Palestine have made Mm a king, they 
would have made me a god if they had known me." Hoveden, 
p. 514. 



236 



THE TIIIUD CRUSADE. 




Saladin. 

protection of liis relative, Joscelyn de Courtena}', titu- 
lar Count of Edessa/-' the custody of the fortresses of 
Palestine to the two military orders, and the general 
regency of the kingdom to the treacherous Count of 
Tripoli. Baldwin IV. survived this disposition only 
three years ; his own decease was quickly followed by 
the suspicious death of his nephew ; and Sybilla, sup- 
ported by the patriarch and the grand-master of the 
Templars, who hated Raymond of Tripoli, obtained 



* This Joscelyn de Courtenay was the gramlson of the hero, and 
the last of the three counts of Edessa, who bore the same name. 
After the loss of the Edessene territory, and the marriage of his 
sister with Almeric, the royal favour had invested him with exten- 
sive fiefs in the kingdom of Palestine ; but, leaving no son, the male 
line of the Asiatic branch of the Courtenays became extinct on his 
death. Lignagcs <T Outremcr, c. xvi. 



RISE OF SALADIN. 237 

the joint coronation of her wortliless husband and 
herself as king and queen of Jerusalem. The proud 
and contemjDtuous refusal of many of the barons to 
acknowledge Lusignan for their sovereign produced a 
civil war, in which the Count of Tripoli, under pre- 
tence of supporting the rival claims of Isabella, sister 
of Sybilla, to a share in the succession, allied himself 
with Saladin; and these disorders were scarcely ap- 
peased by the address of Sybilla and the submission 
of most of the insurgent nobles, when the fatal tem- 
pest of Mussulman war burst upon the disunited and 
devoted state.* 



* Will. Tyr. p. 995, ad fin. Plagon, (continuator of William of 
Tyre, in Martenne, Vet Scriptorum Coll. vol. v.,) p. 583-590. 
Bernardus Thesaurarius, (apud Muratori Scrip. Rer. Ital. vol. vii.,) 
c. 140-147. 







Alexandria. 



238 



THE THIRD CRUSADE. 




sectio:n" n. 



BATTLE OF TIBERIAS AND FALL OF JERUSALEM. 



% ,■■ rY 




'^^^s^^m^ii-. 



^ S long as Saladin was occupied 
in establishing his authority 

; over Egypt and Syria, the peace 
of the Latin kingdom had not 
been much disturbed by the 
incursions of the infidels ; and 
some indecisive hostilities had 
^i^^^S been terminated by a truce. 



BATTLE OF TIBERIAS. 239 

But just at the crisis when the Turkish conqueror was 
prepared to attempt the work of destruction which he 
had probably long meditated, the Christians themselves 
were the first to disturb the hollow pacification, which 
might alone have deferred the hour of their ruin ; and 
a just occasion of war was afforded by the aggressions 
of a predatory baron, Reginald de Chatillon,* [a. c. 
118G J who surprised a frontier castle belonging to the 
Mussulmans on the borders of the Arabian desert, 
intercepted and plundered their caravans between 
Egypt and Mecca, and insolently defied the vengeance 
of the sultan. Saladin demanded redress of the 
King of Jerusalem for these outrageous violations of 
the existing peace ; but the government of Lusignan 
was either too feeble or too corrupt to punish the law- 
less marauder; and, on a refusal of justice, Saladin 
invaded Palestine at the head of eighty thousand 
Turcoman horse and foot. The siege of the castle of 



* The history of this man constitutes in itself a romance ; and its 
details would be considered incredible if narrated by any modern 
writer of fiction. He was of obscure birth, and a native of Chatil- 
lon-sur-Indre, and, following Louis the Young into Asia, was at- 
tached to the troop of Kaymond of Poictiers, Prince of Antioch. 
On the death of Raymond, he was selected by his widow, Constance, 
as her husband, and thus became Prince of Antioch. This choice filled 
the Western barons with disgust, and, as his after conduct showed, did 
no credit to the discrimination of the lady. On the death of Con- 
stance, he married the widow of Humphrey of Touron, Lord of Ca- 
rac; and, possessing no quality of a knight but personal courage, he 
became in that capacity something like a licensed bandit. His fate 
is told above. See Michaud. i. 403. 



240 



THE THIRD CRUSADE. 




z.*:t:;^'v;»w' 



Mecca. 



Tiberias was the first signal operation of the Mussul- 
man host; and, for the relief of so important a fort- 
ress, the whole strength of the Christian states was 
hastily collected. But, including the array of the 
military orders, the King of Jerusalem could now as- 
semble under his standard no more than twelve hun- 
dred knights and twenty thousand foot ; and the dis- 
proportion of his numerical force was aggravated by 
his own incapacity and cowardice, as well as by the 
discord and treason''' which prevailed in his camp. 



* By some of the Latin writers, the destruction of the Christian 
army is ascribed to the treason of the Count of Tripoli, the enemy 
both of Lusignan and of the Grand-Master of the Temple. Mr. 
Mills (^Ilist. of the Crttsades, vol. i. note L) considers the previous 



BATTLE OF TIBERIAS. 241 

On the plain of Tiberias the hostile armies drew out 
for a conflict, of which the event was to decide the fate 
of the Christian kingdom. Few intelligible particulars 
are related of the sanguinary battle which followed ; 
[a. D. 1187;] but those few attest the superior skill of 
Saladin, who, in the first day's encounter, drove his 
opponents into a situation destitute of water; by set- 
ting fire during the night to some neighbouring woods, 
increased their intolerable sufferings from the drought 
and heat of a Syrian summer's night; and on the 
following morning overwhelmed and massacred their 
exhausted and fainting host. Not only was the 
slaughter of the cavaliers and soldiery exterminating, 
but all the principal leaders of the Christian host were 
the victims or prizes of this fatal field : the grand- 
master of the Hospitallers was mortally woiuided and 
died in his flight ; and the chief of the rival order 
of the Temple, together with the Marquis of Mont- 
ferrat, Reginald of Chatillon, the worthless Lusignan 
himself, and many of his nobles and knights, became 
the captives of Saladin. The scene which ensued is 
too characteristic of manners to be omitted in this 



favourable mention of the Count by William of Tyre, and the silence 
of Ralph Coggeshal, whose chronicle is contained in the fifth volume 
of Martenne, and who was in Palestine at the time of the battle of 
Tiberias, as a satisfactory refutation of the charge. But the earlier 
alliance of the Count of Tripoli with Saladin (Bernardus Thesaur. 
c. 140) is undisputed; and his sacrifice of the Christian cause to 
party or personal hatred on that occasion, is surely sufficient to war- 
rant the worst inference from his subsequent conduct. 

16 



242 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

place. "When the trembling Lusignan, and Chatillon, 
the guilty provoker of the war, were conducted to the 
tent of the conqueror, Saladin generously reassured 
the craven king of his safety by the proffer of a cup 
of iced water, the Eastern pledge of hospitality. Lu- 
signan wished to pass the cup to Chatillon ; but the 
sultan sternly declared that the impious marauder, 
who had so often insulted the prophet of Islam, must 
now either acknowledge his law, or die the death 
which his crimes had merited. With more virtue 
than his life had promised, Chatillon spurned the con- 
dition of apostasy ; and a blow from the cimeter of 
the ferocious sultan himself, was the immediate signal 
for his murder. With less excusable cruelty, while 
he spared his other noble prisoners, Saladin, in his fii- 
natical hatred of the religious orders, or his dread of 
their prowess, oflered the same alternative of apostasy 
or death to the knights of St. John and of the Temple 
who had fallen into his hands. To a man, these de- 
voted champions of the cross, two hundred and thirty 
in number, proved the sincerity of their faith ; and 
the victory of the Moslems was stained by the cold- 
blooded murder of the whole body.'-' 

The disastrous effects of the battle of Tiberias 
were immediately felt throughout the Latin kingdom : 

* Bernardus Thesaur. c. 147-151. Contin. Will. Tyr. p. 590-600. 
Jacobus a Vitriaco, Jlist. Ilierosol. p. 1117, 1118, (t?i GestisDciper 
Francos.) Hoveden, p. 636-637. D'llerbelot, Art. Salaheddm, 
(vol. iii. p. 176, 177, &c.) Bohadin, p. 40-68. Abulfeda, p. 32. 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 243 

for all the principal fortresses had been drained of 
their garrisons to swell the ranks of the army; and 
Tiberias itself, Csesarea, Acre, Jaffa, and Beritiis, 
rapidly fell before the arms of the conqueror. Tyre 
was alone preserved through the heroic efforts to 
which the citizens were inspired by the firmness of a 
young cavalier, son to the captive Marquis of Mont- 
ferrat. But Saladin would not suffer any secondary 
object to arrest his great design upon the Christian 
capital ; and turning aside from the walls of Tyre, he 
marched to the siege of the Holy City. Jerusalem 
was already crowded with fugitives from every 
quarter of Palestine; but the number of warriors 
within its gates was small, and their commander was 
a timid A\oman. Queen Sybilla, herself distracted 
with sorrow and apprehension, was more solicitious 
for her own safety and that of her captive consort 
than for the public defence; and dismay and discord 
reigned within the place. The first summons of 
Saladin for its surrender was, indeed, rejected; but 
when the siege was formed, the resistance was 
feeble or ineffectual; and in fourteen days, the 
Turks, despite of the sallies and efforts of the gar- 
rison, had advanced their works and engines to the 
foot of the rampart, and undermined the walls. A 
desire to capitulate was then expressed ; but Saladin, 
in his fury at the refusal to accept his proffered 
terms, had sworn to execute a dreadful vengeance 
upon the Christians for the Moslem blood which their 



244 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

ancestors had shed at the capture of the city in the 
first Crusade. He now, therefore, received the pro- 
posal of a capitulation with bitter contempt ; and he 
only listened to the suggestions of mercy, when his 
burst of passion was spent, and the suppliant Chris- 
tians left him to dictate the terms of surrender. He 
then consented to spare the lives of the inhabitants, 
and promised a safe-conduct for the queen, her nobles, 
and soldiery, to Tyre, but declared that the remaining 
population of Jerusalem should become slaves, unless 
they were ransomed at the rate of ten crowns of gold 
for each man, half that sum for each woman, and a 
single piece for every child. 

As soon as these terms had been accepted by the 
submission of the vanquished, Saladin exhibited traits 
of a generous humanity which might have been little 
anticipated from the cruelty with which he had re- 
cently stained the victory of Tiberias ; and his con- 
duct at Jerusalem well merits the eulogy of an 
enemy, that he was in nothing but in name a bar- 
barian. He not only performed his promises with a 
religious fidelity, but exceeded their fulfilment by a 
full measure of benevolence. When the weeping 
female train of the queen issued from the gates of Je- 
rusalem, his spirit melted even unto tears at the spec- 
tacle of their misery : he advanced to meet the 
mourners ; attempted to console the princess with the 
courteous sympathy of a warrior of chivalry ; released 
the husbands and children of all her train without 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 245 

ransom; and even dismissed them laden with pre- 
sents. Nor did his generosity end here : for he ac- 
cepted a price very much beneath the stipulated sum 
for the freedom of the Christian poor ; and even libe- 
rated so many of his other captives gratuitously, that 
the total number who remained in bondage did not 
much exceed ten thousand, out of a population which 
is said to have amounted to one hundred thousand. 
These better feelings of his nature achieved a more 
difficult triumph over even the fanaticism which was 
usually his master passion : for learning the humane 
attentions which the knights of the Hospital bestowed 
upon the sick, he allowed several brethren of an 
order which he detested and found ever in arms 
against him, to remain in the city a sufficient time for 
the accomplishment of their pious and charitable 
offices.* 

When the queen and her train had been safely dis- 
missed, the magnanimous victor made his entry into 
Jerusalem in triumphant and splendid procession. 
The great Mosque of Omar, on the site of Solomon's 
Temple, which had been converted into a Christian 
church, was immediately consecrated anew to the 
worship of Islam, after its pavement and walls had 
been washed with Damascene rose-water ; the golden 



* Bernadus, c. 151-167. Cont.Will. Tyr. p. 601-613. Hoveden, 
p. 637-645. D'Herbelot, uli suprci. Boliadin, p. 68-75. Abulfeda, 
p. 39-43. 



246 THE TUIRD CRUSADE. 

cross which surmounted the dome of the Church of 
the Sepulchre was taken down, and for two days 
dragged through the streets; and after a possession 
by the Christians of eighty-eight years, Jerusalem was 
again defiled by the religion and empire of the 
votaries of Mohammed. Nazareth, Bethlehem, Asca- 
lon, Sidon, quickly followed the fate of the capital; 
the principality of Antioch was only spared on the 
ignominious condition of tribute to the Sultan; and 
of all the possessions of the Christians in Palestine, 
the seaport of Tyre was almost the only place of im- 
portance which was saved from the wreck of their 
fortunes. But to that city all the Christian garrisons 
which capitulated had been permitted to retire : the 
whole remaining strength of the Latin chivalry of 
Palestine was contained within its walls : and when 
the Turkish army a second time appeared before the 
place, it was again so bravely defended under the 
guidance of Conrad of Montferrat, that the conqueror 
of Jerusalem was compelled to retire from a fruitless 
siege. The grateful people resolved to bestow the 
sovereignty of their city upon their brave leader ; and 
when Guy of Lusignan, having obtained his libe- 
ration, attempted to enter the place, they refused to 
admit him within the walls, or to acknowledge 
further allegiance to the man on whose incapacity 
and cowardice they laid the ruin of the Christian 
cause. Lusignan, indeed, had only obtained his re- 
lease by a solemn renunciation of his crown to 



CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 



247 



Saladin ; and the sultan, satisfied with this vain con- 
firmation to the title of conquest, had returned to 
enjoy his glory at Damascus; when he was roused 
from a brief season of repose by the alarming report 
that the nations of Europe, burning with ardour to 
avenge the shame of the Christian defeat, and the 
loss of the Sepulchre of Christ, were again about to 
precipitate themselves upon the shores of Palestine.'^' 

* Bernardus, c. 167-177. Coggeshal, p. 811, 812. Hist. Hierosol. 
{in Gestis Dei, &c.) p. 1150-1169 




^_ [TTUJiiu^lw -J Ik. l"^M, ^i ^ lfejji^||lj-f ' ' 



248 



THE THIRD CRUSADE, 




SECTION m. 



THE GERMANS UNDERTAKE THE CRUSADE. 



HE news of the fall of Jeru- 
salem had filled all Western 
Christendom with horror and 
grief. By the superstitious 
piety of the age, the apathetic 
indifference which had per- 
mitted the hallowed scenes of 
human redemption again to be 
profaned with the triumph of 
the enemies of God, was deeply 
felt as an offence, which merited 
and would provoke the ^^-rathful judgments of Heaven. 




GERMANS UNDERTAKE THE CRUSADE. 240 

But after the first shock of the intelligence, the gene- 
ral consternation and despair were at once succeeded 
by a burst of enthusiasm, equally congenial to the 
fanatical and martial state of society. All the prin- 
cipal sovereigns of Europe,* — except those of Spain, 
who found sufficient exercise for their zeal against the 
Mussulman power in that peninsula — immediately 
vowed to lead their national forces to the recovery of 
Jerusalem : but even their earnest preparations were 
too tardy for the popular impatience; and myriads of 
their subjects, thronging from every country to the 
ports of the Mediterranean, took shipping at their 
private charge, and hastened to the shores of Pales- 
tine. The chief means of transport, were, as usual, 
supplied by the maritime republics of Italy; but 
numerous bands of pilgrims, embarking from the ports 

* Henry II. of England and Philippe-Auguste of France met and 
received the Cross together near Gisors; and the English king ap- 
pears to have been earnest in his intention of undertaking the 
Crusade, until prevented by the second rebellion of his sons. At a 
great council which he assembled at Gidington, in Northamptonshire, 
it was agreed that a tenth of all rents and movables should be levied 
from the clergy and laity of the realm for the service of the expe- 
dition; and by this means the king obtained seventy thousand 
pounds from his Christian subjects; while he extorted the enormous 
sum, for those days, of sixty thousand more from the Jews in his 
dominions, at the rate of a fourth of all their possessions. Gervase, 
p. 1529. Hoveden, p. 644. This tax of one-tenth, under the name 
of the Saladin tithe, was imposed by general consent throughout 
Europe; and though originally proposed to last only for one year, 
was perpetuated, by the cupidity of the Papal See, into a claim upon 
the tenth of all ecclesiastical benefices. 



250 THE TIIIKD CRUSADE. 

of the Baltic, the North Seas, and the British Chan- 
nel, from thence accom^^lished the whole maritime 
passage to the Asiatic coast.'="* 

By the arrival at Tyre, in quick succession, of all 
these crusaders, led by many noblemen and prelates 
of distinction, the imbecile king of Jerusalem soon 
found himself at the head of a numerous army; and 
when he was encouraged or impelled by the renovated 
strength and ardent zeal of his followers to advance 
from Tyre and lay siege to Acre, the numbers of the 
Christian host before the walls of that important city 
rapidly swelled to one hundred thousand men. 
[a. d. 1189.] The danger of a fortress which, by its 
position between the sea and the great central valley 
of Palestine, may be regarded as the maritime key of 
the whole country, roused Saladin from his inaction ; 
and while the strength of the fortifications and the 
valour of a numerous Mussulman garrison, defied all 
the efforts of the crusaders, the Sultan himself, arriv- 
ing in the adjacent plain at the head of a mighty 
host, enveloped their beleaguers, and harassed them 
with perpetual though desultory assaults. The Chris- 
tians, in their turn, were reduced to the necessity of 
standing on the defensive ; their camp was diligently 
fortified; and such was the strength and complete- 
ness of the works with which they surrounded it, that 



* Bcrnartlus Thesaur. c. 177, 178. Bcnedictus Abbas Petrober- 
gcnsis, p. 495, 49(3. Hoveden, p. G36-640. Hist. Illerosol p. 1170. 



GERMANS UNDERTAKE THE CRUSADE. 251 

in the hyperbolical language of the East, the Mussul- 
mans declared not even a bird could penetrate the 
lines. By sea the contest was maintained with equal 
obstinacy; for the naval forces of the combatants 
were so nicely balanced, that, by each successive rein- 
forcement, either party was enabled to relieve the gar- 
rison of Acre, or to refresh the wants of the besiegers. 
The latter, indeed, suffered so dreadfully from famine, 
disease, and the incessant vicissitudes of combat, that 
above three hundred thousand crusaders are com- 
puted to have perished before the walls and in the 
plain of Acre ; and the losses of the Mussulmans from 
the same causes were probably inferior only in de- 
gree. But, on both sides, this frightful consumption 
of human life was continually fed by new arrivals; 
and during nearly two years the strength of Christen- 
dom and Islam was concentrated and exhausted in an 
indecisive conflict before the single city of Acre.''*' 

Meanwhile, the great monarchs of the West were 
gathering their national powers for the third Crusade. 
Foremost in preparation, as in dignity among them, 
was the Emperor Frederic Barl^arossa, in whom age 
had no power either to quench the thirst of glory or 
to chill the fire of religious enthusiasm. But the chival- 
rous devotion of Frederic was regulated by those pru- 
dential qualities of a great commander, which had been 



* Bernardus Thesaur, c. 179. Hist. Tlierosol. p. 1170-1172. 
Boliadin, (//i vita Saladvi), p. 180. Vinesauf, iihi ivfra, p. 427. 



252 



THE THIRD CRUSADE. 




Frederic Barbarossa. 



matured in forty years of warfare; and while he 
boldly resolved to take the same route through the 
East of Europe and Asia Minor, which had been 
found so disastrous to former hosts of crusaders, his 
provident and skilful arrangements showed how atten- 
tively he had studied the tremendous lessons of their 



GERxMANS UNDERTAKE THE CRUSADE. 253 

failure. No individual was permitted to join in the 
sacred enterprise who was unable to furnish the means 
of his own support for a whole year ; and the march 
from the confines of Germany to the shores of the 
Hellespont was conducted with the strictest regularity 
and discipline. The numbers and composition of the 
host were worthy of the imperial name and power. 
Besides his own son, the Duke of Swabia, Frederic 
was attended by the dukes of Austria and Moravia, 
by above sixty other princes and great lords of the 
empire, and by fifteen thousand knights, the fiower of 
the Teutonic chivalry. Their mounted attendants 
swelled the total array of cavalry to sixty thousand ; 
and the infantry, exclusive of unarmed pilgrims, num- 
bered one hundred thousand men. Throughout their 
passage over the Greek dominions, the German host 
encountered a repetition of precisely the same course 
of treacherous hostility, under the hollow semblance 
of amity, which the Byzantine court and people had 
pursued in the previous Crusades ; but the vengeance 
of his troops was generally restrained by the mag- 
nanimous or prudent forbearance of Frederic ; and 
though he resented the perfidy of the reigning Empe- 
ror of the East, Isaac Angelus, by refusing to visit 
Constantinople as a guest, he peaceably transported 
his formidable host across the Hellespont. The sub- 
sequent passage through Asia Minor was a yet severer 
trial of Frederic's patience and ability ; but his genius 
surmounted every obstacle of climate and warfare; 



254 THE TIIIKD CRUSADE. 

and tlie march of the imperial army was effected with 
far superior order, success, and reputation, to tliat of 
any preceding host of crusaders. The sufferings of a 
route through burning and waterless deserts admitted, 
indeed, of little mitigation ; and thousands of the Ger- 
mans sank under fatigue, agonizing thirst, and the per- 
petual assaults of the Turcoman hordes, which hung 
upon their flanks and rear. But the firmness of the 
Teutonic array repulsed every attack, and prevented 
any general disaster ; and Frederic not only defeated 
the Sultan of Iconium, but stormed his capital and 
compelled him to sue for peace. Having thus over- 
borne all opposition, the aged hero pursued his way 
in unmolested and triumphant ardour, until he lost 
his life in the little Cilician stream of the Calycadnus, 
either by a fall from his horse, or by imprudently 
bathing in the icy waters of that mountain torrent. 
[a. d. 1190.] The consequences of this event proved 
how largely his followers had been indebted for their 
success to the greatness of his personal qualities. The 
infidels, recovering from the terror inspired by his 
name and actions, immediately renewed their hostili- 
ties on the report of his death ; and thenceforth the 
German army was incessantly harassed by attacks, 
and nearly disorganized by famine, sickness, and the 
efforts of the enemy. Thus, although Frederic's son, 
the Duke of Swabia, who succeeded to the command, 
was neither deficient in courage nor ability, so dread- 
ful were the losses of the crusaders that before they 



GERMANS UNDERTAKE THE CRUSADE 255 

reached the Syrian confines, their numbers were re- 
duced to one-tenth of their original force. Their 
array was still, however, sufficiently formidable, on 
their arrival at Antioch, to deliver that principality 
from the oppression of Saladin, whose troops retired 
at their approach ; and from thence the gallant Duke 
of Swabia, with unbroken spirit, led the remains of 
the German army to reinforce the crusaders before 
Acre ; but it was only to perish himself of disease, 
with some thousands of his devoted and way-worn 
followers, under the walls of that city.* 

The arrival of the German chivalry before Acre 
was followed by the memorable institution of a mar- 
tial order of religious kniglithood, which, emulating 
the design of the fraternities of St. John and of the 
Temple, and surviving the original object of its crea- 
tion for the defence of Palestine, was fated to perform 
no inconsiderable part in the subsequent history of 
Northern Europe. Above half a century before the 
loss of Jerusalem, a German crusader and his lady had 
founded hospitals in that capital for poor pilgrims of 
both sexes of their nation ; and, when subsequent 
endowments had enriched these houses, the male bre- 
thren were moved by the example of the two great 
orders, to devote themselves to military as well as 
charitable services. But their efforts had obtained 

* Hist. Hierosol. p. 1156-1163. Godfridi Monachi Annales, p, 
348-356. Tageno, p. 407-416. (Both in the second volume of 
Struve's edition of the Rerum Gcrynan Scriptores of Freher.) 



256 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

little distinction, and their fraternity was dissolved by 
the expulsion of the Christians from Jerusalem. Its 
i^urposes were now recalled to the national attention 
by the private charity of some individuals among the 
German army, who supplied the want of regular hos- 
pitals, by opening their tents before Acre for the re- 
ception of their sick and wounded countrymen ; and 
a number of knights joining their benevolent associa- 
tion, the Duke of Swabia seized the occasion to incor- 
porate them, for the national honour, into a regular 
order of religious chivalry, in avowed imitation of 
those of the Hospital and Tem.ple. A papal au- 
thority approved the design, invested the new order 
with the same privileges as its elder co-fraterni- 
ties, and ordained the rule of St. Augustin for its 
government. A white mantle with a black cross was 
appointed for the garb of the brotherhood, who were 
divided into three classes of noble cavaliers, priests 
and sergeants, all exclusively of German race ; and 
thenceforth, under the title of the Teutonic Knights 
of St. Mary of Jerusalem, the order w^orthily aspired 
to an equality in duties and honour with the two 
great martial fraternities of Palestine.* 

* Jacobus a Vit. p. 1083. 



RICHARD CCEUR DE LION. 



257 




SECTIOI:T K 



RICHARD CCEUR DE LION IN PALESTINE 




HILE the 
German 
army was 
still thread- 
ing its toil- 
some march 
through the 
deserts and 
mountain 

passes of 
Asia Minor, 
the sove- 
reigns of 
France and 



17 



258 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

England had availed themselves of the maritime 
position and resources of their states to escape the 
same dangers and fatigues by a naval passage to the 
Syrian shores. Both Philippe-Auguste and Richard 
Coeur de Lion were in the full pride of youthful am- 
bition, impatient for chivalric distinction, and actuated 
far more by the thirst of glory than by the religious 
spirit of the age. Interchanging vows of eternal 
friendship, which were as passionately broken in the 
first moment of jealous excitement, they had agreed 
to combine their forces for the sacred expedition ; and 
on the plain of Vezelay in France, they reviewed a 
gallant and well-equipped host, which amounted to 
one hundred thousand men of both nations, and of all 
arms. Conducting their march in concert as far as 
Lyons, the two monarchs separated at that city, after 
naming the port of Messina in Sicily as the place of 
reunion for their combined armaments : Philippe 
leading the French forces to embark at Genoa ; and 
Richard proceeding to Marseilles with his army, 
there to expect the arrival of his fleet''' from England. 



* Before his departure from Normandy, Ricliard promulgated a 
code of regulations for the government of his fleet, which, as illus- 
trative of the rude principles of marine jurisprudence adopted in that 
age, would be worthy of a place in our naval history. A murderer 
was to be tied to the corpse of his victim and cast with it into the sea ; 
or if the crime were committed on shore, to be buried in the same 
grave with the dead body. A simple blow was to be punished by 
the immersion of the offender thrice in the sea ; but if blood were 
drawn, by the loss of his right hand: abusive language by a tine. A 



RICHARD C(EUR DE LION. 259 

But liis impatience would brook no delay; and find- 
ing that his own navy had not reached that port, he 
immediately hired a few vessels for the conveyance 
of his suite, sailed for the Italian coast, and after 
rashly exposing himself to several dangerous adven- 
tures,''' crossed into Sicily. Meanwhile the English 
fleet, after touching at Lisbon on its way, and success- 
fully assisting in the defence of Santarem against a 
Mussulman army, reached the Mediterranean in 
safety, received the land forces on board at Marseilles, 
and entered the port of Messina some days before the 
arrival either of Philippe or Richard himself f 

In Sicily both monarchs wintered wdth their forces; 
and here several circumstances arose to foment into 
hatred those feelings of ambitious rivalry which 
naturally sprang from their conflicting pride and pre- 
tensions. Against Tancred, the reigning king of 



thief was to have his head shaved, tarred and feathered ; and in that 
state to be set on shore at the first opportunity. Hoveden, p. G66. 

* On one occasion, when travelling in Southern Italy with a single 
attendant, he entered a cottage to seize a falcon which he heard was 
detained there: for it seems that no '^base churl" might without 
offence possess a bird trained for the exclusive sport of the chivalric 
order. The peasants presumed to resist his violence ; and in the 
broil, as he struck one of them, who had drawn a dagger upon him, 
with the flat of his sword, the weapon broke ; and he was compelled 
to defend himself with stones until he effected his retreat to a neigh- 
bouring monastery. Hoveden, p. 672. 

f Hoveden, p. G64-673. Galfridi a Vinesauf, Id'neranum Regis 
Anghrum Richardi, &c. in Terrain. Hierosol. (apud Gale. Scrip- 
tures Hist. Anglican, vol. ii.) p. 24:7-308. 



260 



TUE THIRD CRUSADE. 




Richard Occur de Lion. 



Sicily, Richard had several causes of resentment 
for the detention in prison of his sister Joan, relict of 
"William II., the late sovereign of the island, and a 
refusal either to restore her dower, or to pay legacies 
■svhich her husband had bequeathed to the English 
crown. To enforce redress for these injuries, Richard 
had recourse to very violent proceedings : seized a 
castle, on his sister's release, for her residence, took 
military possession of other posts, and allowed his 
troops to commit many excesses. While the French 



RICHARD CCEUR DE LIOK. 261 

king was interposing as a mediator, the citizens of 
Messina were provoked to attack the English, and 
after a bloody engagement, in which the latter pre- 
vailed, Richard allowed them to sack the city, and 
planted his banners on its walls. Philippe was 
justly offended at an outrage, which in effect, as he 
resided in Messina, left him a prisoner in the hands 
of an ally who was also his vassal; and Richard was 
at last induced to appease him by withdrawing his 
troops. The submission of Tancred to all the de- 
mands of the English monarch restored the general 
peace ; and Richard generously sent Philippe twenty 
thousand ounces of gold, as the moiety of the sum 
which he compelled the Sicilian prince to pay in 
satisfaction of his claims. He also loaded both 
English and French knights with presents ; and on 
Christmas day feasted the whole chivalry of the two 
nations, and dismissed every individual with some 
largess apportioned to his rank. His prodigal dissi- 
pation, by such means, of the treasures which had 
been wrung from his subjects before his departure on 
the Crusade, exalted his popularity in both armies far 
above that of his more provident or less wealthy 
rival ; and formed an additional source of jealousy to 
Philippe. A new ground of quarrel between the two 
monarchs was soon created by the intelligence that 
Richard, disregarding his engagement to marry Alice 
or Adelia, sister of Philippe, was about to espouse the 
Princess Berengaria, daughter of Sancho, king of 



262 



THE TIIIKD CRUSADE. 




RHODES. : 



Ndvarre, who, in effect, soon after arrived in Sicily, 
escorted by the queen-mother, Eleanor of England. 
After much dispute, Philippe at last consented to 
release Richard from his contract upon his promise to 
pay ten thousand marks, and to restore Alice with the 
castles which had been assigned as her dower/-' 

Their feuds being thus terminated by a hollow re- 
conciliation, Philippe, on the return of spring, was 
the first to depart with his forces from the Sicilian 
shores, and arrived Avithout accident at the Christian 
camp before Acre ; but Richard was less fortunate or 
prudent. Off the coast of Crete, his fleet was dis- 
persed by a storm ; and at Rhodes his fiery temper 
was roused by intelligence that two of his vessels, 
which had been wrecked on the shores of Cyprus, were 



* Hovedcn, p. G73-688. Vinesauf, p. 308-31G. 



EICIIARD CCEUR DE LIOX. 26o 

plundered, and the crews detained in captivity. To 
revenge this injury he sailed for Cyprus ; and, having 
in vain demanded reparation of Isaac, a prince of 
Comnenian race, who had revolted against the Byzan- 
tine throne and seized the government of the island, 
the English monarch disembarked his troops, took 
Lymesol, the tyrant's capital, by storm, and, being 
assisted by the defection of the islanders, compelled 
him to surrender at discretion. The English prince 
made an ungenerous use of his victory ; for he threw 
the fallen usurper into chains, wdiich, with a mockery 
of respect, were forged of silver ; grievously taxed the 
Cypriots, who had welcomed him as their deliverer ; 
and asserted the title of conquest to the lordship of 
their island. After celebrating at Lymesol his nup- 
tials with Berengaria, which had been deferred in 
Sicily on account of the season of Lent, Richard finally 
sailed for Acre. The numbers of his land forces have 
not been recorded ; but the magnitude of the whole 
armament may be estimated by the enumeration of 
his fleet, which consisted of fifty galleys of war, thir- 
teen large store-vessels, and above one hundred other 
transports filled with horses and men. On the short 
voyage from Cyprus to the Syrian shore, the English 
navy intercepted an enormous troop-ship of Saladin, 
having on board, according to the Latin chroniclers, 
for the reinforcement of the garrison of Acre, the in- 
credible number of fifteen hundred men, and well sup- 
plied with stores of the Greek fire. The great bulk 



264 



THE THIRD CRUSADE. 



and lofty sides of this vessel long defied the attacks 
of the light galleys of the Christians ; but she was at 
length carried by boarding ; her hull being either scut- 
tled, during the conflict, by the desperation of her 
own crew, or pierced by the beaks of the English gal- 
leys, she sank with all her stores ; and every soul of 
the infidels, except thirty-five, was either massacred 
or drowned.* 

A few days afterward Rich- 
ard disembarked his army be- 
fore Acre ; and his arrival was 
greeted in the Christian camp 
with enthusiastic rejoicings. 
Notwithstanding the previous 
junction of the King of France 
and his forces, the operations 
of the long-protracted siege had 
continued to languish ; but the 
English monarch had no sooner 
landed his battering engines 
than, despite of an illness un- 
der which he was labouring, he 
caused the attack to be pressed with the utmost 
vigour; and as well by his personal example as by 
prodigal rewards, animated the whole crusading host 




Sic<;e of Acre. 



* Hovcden, p. G88-692. Vinesauf, p. 31G-329. Bohadin, p. 
166. But the 3Iussulman historian rates the troops on board this 
great store-ship at only six hundred and fifty, still indicating in the 
vessel a hulk very unusual for the times. 



RICHARD C(EUR DE LION. 



265 




Movable Toiccrs used in Sieges. 



with a new spirit. Every effort of Saladin to rout 
the besiegers or reUeve the place was repulsed ; and 
at length, after an heroic resistence, finding their de- 
fences shattered on every side and their numbers daily 
diminished, the exhausted and despairing garrison 
obtained the reluctant permission of the sultan to 
capitulate. Upon condition that Saladin should re- 
store the wood of the true cross which he had taken 
in Jerusalem, release fifteen hundred chosen Christian 
captives, deliver up Acre, and ransom the garrison by 
the payment of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. 



266 



THE THIRD CRUSADE. 




the monarcbs of France and En2;lancl ao-reed to spare 
the lives of all the JMussulmans in the place. Upon 
these terms the city was surrendered ; and the banner 
of the cross was again planted on its ruined walls. 
The garrison and inhabitants, with the exception of 
some thousand hostages, were permitted to depart 
unmolested ; and the sultan immediately broke up his 
camp and withdrew from the vicinity of the captured 
fortress. His subsequent failure, from reluctance, or 
more probably from inability, to pay the ransom of the 
prisoners within the stipulated period, was the signal 
for a tragedy horribly characteristic of the barbarous and 
fanatical spirit of crusading warfare. The Mussulman 
hostages, to the number of above five thousand, being 
led out from the city to the French and English 
camps, were slaughtered in cold blood ; and Richard 
himself, in a letter still extant, boasted of the massa- 
cre as an acceptable service to Heaven. The sultan 
was not slow to revenge this cruelty in the blood of 



RICHARD COSUR DE LION. 



267 




liichard C'oeur de Lion at Acre. 



his Christian captives; and on both sides repeated 
butcheries continued to darken the mutual hatred of 
the combatants.''' 



* Hoveden, p. G92-698. Vinesauf, p. 329-346. Bohadin, p. 
180-188. Hoveden, indeed, declares that the massacre of the Chris- 
tian captives by Saladin preceded that of the Turkish hostages by 
Richard; but Bohaden says otherwise; and it is not probable that 
the sultan would thus have provoked the destruction of his people, 
whom he had wished to save. The expressions in Richard's letter, 
as given in Hoveden, (p. 698,) are (Thus, as in duty bound, we put 
them to death,) Sic ut drcuit, fecimus ejtj)iare ; and no writer in 
that fanatical age seems to have imagined that even the cold-blooded 
slaughter of infidels could be otherwise than meritorious and accept- 
able to Heaven. The old romance of Rldiard denr de Lion goes 
yet a step further; for it exaggerates the glorious deed into the murder 
of sixty thousand infidels ; and the author, imagining that the sub- 



268 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

The capture of Acre was hailed l^y the Christians 
as a glad omen of the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. 
But these sanguine anticipations were short!}' chilled 
by the retirement of the King of France from the 
Crusade. The causes of this secession, for which se- 
vere illness afforded some plea, have been sought in 
feelings of jealousy at the superior glory won during 
the siege of Acre by the liberality and prowess of his 
royal associate. The eminent political abilities of 
Philippe-Auguste, indeed, though they placed him in 
sober estimation at an immeasurable distance above 
his irrational and fiery rival, were of little weight in 
the fields of Palestine ; the martial qualities by which 
he was himself distinguished would sustain no com- 
parison with the transcendent personal heroism of the 
"Lion-hearted" Plantagenet; and he who, in the 
annals of Europe, figures as the ablest monarch and 
most renowned conqueror of his age, is discerned only 
through the wild romance of the Crusades as the en- 
vious or recreant deserter from a holy war. But the 
withdrawal of Philippe was produced less by any in- 
ject deserved to be ^associated •with pleasurable emotions, thus pre- 
faces the tale of the butchery with a poetical descant on the charms 
of the vernal season : — 

" Merry is, in time of May 

When fowlis sing in her lay 

Flowcres on apple-trees and perry 

Small fowles sing merry 

Ladies strew her bowers 

With red roses and lily flowers," &o. 

Ellis, Sj^ecant'iis of Metrical Romancea, vol. ii. 273. 



RICHARD C(EUR DE LION. 269 

consistency in his own character than by the intem- 
perate conduct of Richard. The reckless spirit with 
which the English king had already wasted so much 
of the season for action in Sicily and Cyprus, and the 
intolerable arrogance of pretensions that would brook 
no control, alike foreboded any but a happy issue to 
the confederacy of which he was so puissant a mem- 
ber; and, unless the King of France had been pre- 
pared to submit unconditionally to his capricious and 
haughty dictation, their separation might alone avert 
an open rupture, and the total ruin of the Crusade. 
The real disgrace of Philip was his subsequent perfidy 
in attacking the dominions of his absent rival, con- 
trary to the solemn oath which Richard exacted from 
him on his departure ; but the interests of the Cru- 
sade itself ^vere promoted by his abandoning to his 
rival the undivided possession of the supreme com- 
mand ; and, as an evidence of his sincerity in the 
cause, he left with Richard ten thousand of his best 
troops under the conduct of the Duke of Burgundy.""'*' 

After the retirement of the French king, Richard 
prepared to resume the design of the war/j- and still 



* Hoveden, p. G97. Vinesauf, p. 344. That Richard, however, 
was greatly incensed at his rival's desertion, is evident from the in- 
temperate expressions of his letter. 

■j" He had some difficulty in inducing his army to quit the licen- 
tious pleasures of Acre : a city so abounding, according to Vinesauf, 
vino per Optimo et pudlis pulclicrrimis, (in choicest wines and fairest 
damsels,) that by deep potations the countenances of the gravest 
warriors in the host had contracted a disgraceful rubicundity. 



270 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

found himself able to muster nearl}' thirty thousand 
English, French, and German warriors under the 
standard of the cross. He conducted the advance of 
this combined force from Acre in a southerly direction 
upon Jaffa, along the sea-shore ; and in the order of 
his march no inconsiderable share of military skill 
and discipline is observable. Nearest to the coast, 
and in communication with the English fleet, which 
attended the expedition with supplies of provisions 
and stores, were the camp-train and followers ; while 
the army itself, covering these accessories, moved in 
five divisions : the Templars in the van, the Hospi- 
tallers closing up the rear ; and the archers and other 
lio-ht-armed foot on the left or outward flank to check 
with their missiles the desultory but galling onsets of 
the Turkish cavalry. By day, clouds of these horse- 
men hovered around the front, flank, and rear of the 
Christians, and harassed their march with incessant 
assaults : by night, Saladin encamped in their vicinity, 
and broke the repose of the wearied soldiery with 
frequent alarms. But the firm array, the unshaken 
valour, and the patient'-' determination of the Europe- 
ans, exhausted all the artifices of Asiatic warfare. 
The daily march was accomplished in compact array, 

* The heroic fortitude of the crusaders is attested by the unsuspi- 
cious evidence of an enemy and an eye-witness. Many of them 
who liad received several Turkish arrows at a time in their chain- 
mail, the thick cloth lining of which alone protected them from 
wounds, marched on, while these shafts bristled on their backs, with 
a firm step and calm demeanour. Bohadin, p. 189. 



RICHARD CffiUR DE LIOX. 271 

and with a slow but resolute advance ; at sunset the 
army regularly halted ; and thrice during the night 
the loud voices of the heralds, breaking the deep si- 
lence of the camp with solemn injunction to remem- 
ber the Holy Sepulchre, roused the slumbering senti- 
nels of the religious host to watchfulness and prayer. 
At length Saladin, reinforced by new swarms of the 
Moslems from all parts of his empire, and finding 
every desultory attempt to arrest the progress of the 
Christians unavailing, resolved upon one mighty effort 
to accomplish their total destruction. On the morn- 
ing of the sixteenth'^' day after the advance of the 
crusaders from Acre, when near Azotus, the brazen 
kettle-drum of the sultan sounded the attack ; and 
the whole infidel host was suddenly precipitated, in 
one tremendous charge, upon the Christian array. So 
rapid and furious was the onset, so vastly superior 
were the numbers of the assailants, and so over- 
whelming the force and weight of the shock, that the 
small squadrons of the crusaders, enclosed within their 
own infantry, were for a time crushed together from 
all sides by the pressure. Galled by the Turkish 
arrows, the chivalry impatiently demanded permission 
to extricate themselves by a charge; but the fiery 
Plantagenet, now alone calm, cool, and collected, and 



* Not the eleventli, as the exact Gibbon (c. lix.) with unusual 
inaccuracy has stated ; for Richard commenced his march from Acre 
on the 22d of August, and the battle of Azotus was fought on the 
7th of September. Hoveden and Vinesauf, in locis. 



272 



TUE THIRD CRUSADE. 




Richard I. at Azotus. 



foreseeing a decisive victory, 
restrained the impetuosity of 
liis knights, until he observed 
that the quivers of the infidels 
were emptied and their strengtli 
exhausted. Then, causing the 
infantry to open out, he led 
and let loose the Christian chi- 
valry in all directions upon the 
wavering enemy. The whole 
Turkish host, unable to resist 
the vigour and strength of these 
steel-clad squadrons, broke and 
fled to the adjacent hills. So 
successful and sanguinary were the charge and pursuit, 
that above twenty emirs and seven thousand of the 
flower of the Turkish cavalry were slain on the field; 
and the result justified the boast of Richard, that, in 
forty campaigns, the veteran sultan had never sus- 
tained so severe a defeat.'-' 

After this signal victory, the crusaders, without fur- 
ther molestation by the infidels, pursued their tri- 
umphant march to Jafia ; and, Saladin having wisely 
destroyed the works of fortresses which he was hope- 
less of preserving, they took possession both of that 
city and Cassarea, with other dismantled castles in 
their vicinity. It is said that Richard desired at once 



* Hovcden, p. G98. Vincsauf, p. 34G-360. 



RICHARD C(EUR DE LION. Zto 

to have followed up liis success by advancing against 
Jerusalem, but was prevented by the factious opposi- 
tion of the French barons, who, seconded by the wish 
of the army to repose from their fatigues, insisted upon 
the necessity of first rebuilding the fortifications of 
Jaffa and its dependencies.* However this might 
have been, two months were consumed in restoring 
these works, and in vain negotiations with Saladin,f 
before the crusaders again moved forward toward 
Jerusalem. They penetrated without serious opposi- 

* During this cessation of active hostilities, Richard, while pur- 
suing the sport of falconry with his usual imprudence, beyond the 
precints of the Christian lines, was attacked by a party of Saracens, 
and only escaped captivity or death through the generous devotion 
of a Provencal knight named Guillaume de Pratelles, who drew off 
the attention of the enemy by feigning to be the king, and as such 
surrendered himself. Richard proved not ungrateful; for his last 
care in Palestine was to ransom his preserver. Vinesauf, p. 372. 

f In the course of these negotiations, which were more than once 
interrupted and resumed, Richard and Saladin seem to have se- 
riously entertained a singular project for an accommodation of the 
Christian and Moslem interests by means of a marriage between 
Saphadin, or Malec-al-Adel, the brother of the Sultan, and the 
widowed queen of Sicily, sister of the English king, who had ac- 
companied him to Palestine. With his Christian bride, the Mussul- 
man prince was to receive from his brother the sovereignty of Jeru- 
salem ; but the whole design, according to Bohadin, though agreea- 
ble to both Saladin and Richard, was frustrated by the repugnance 
of both Asiatics and Europeans to so unnatural an alliance. Bo- 
hadin, p. 209. During the negotiations, the two armies mingled in 
constant and amicable intercourse ; and frequent kindnesses were 
interchanged between their sovereigns. When Richard was ill, 
Saladin sent him the choicest fruits, and the yet greater refreshment 
of snow during the burning heats of summer. Hoveden, p. 693. 

18 



274 TUE THIRD CRUSADE. 

tion to Ramula within a short distance of the Holy 
City. But here the inclemency of the season, want 
of provisions, and the consequent and alarming in- 
crease of sickness, arrested their march ; and Richard 
himself admitted the present hopelessness of success. 
The army, therefore, fell back to the coast ; and the 
winter was spent by the soldiery in repairing the walls 
of several of the conquered fortresses, and by their 
leaders in treacherous intrigues or violent dissensions. 
At length, on the return of spring, Richard so for suc- 
ceeded in restoring unanimity as to assemble all the 
Christian forces in Palestine under his standard ; and 
at their head again he advanced toward Jerusalem. 
The general enthusiasm of the army was kindled by 
the renovated hope of success ; the chieftains and 
soldiery joined in a solemn oath that the}^ would not 
quit Palestine until the Sepulchre of Christ should be 
redeemed ; and when the army reached the valley of 
Hebron, and arrived even in sight of the Holy City, 
the accomplishment of their vows seemed at hand. 
The Moslems were filled with consternation ; num- 
bers fled from Jerusalem ; and even Saladin despaired 
of preserving his proudest conquest.* 

But, at this critical juncture, the sultan was de- 
livered from his apprehensions by the unexpected 
retreat of the crusading host. [a. d. 1192.] The 
causes of this failure are variously ascribed by the 

* Hovcden, p. 698-714. Vinesauf, p. 360-409. Bohadin, p. 
188-237. Abulfeda, p. 50-52. 



RICHARD CCEUR DE LION. 



271 







Hebron. 

Christian chronicles to the contemplated difficulties 
of a siege, to the envious or treasonable defection of 
the Duke of Burgundy and his French followers, and 
to the indecision of Richard himself. But the best 
attested account is that which refers the abandonment 
of the enterprise to the act of the king.* Whether 
he was swayed by his usual impulses of caprice, urged 



* Vinesauf, p. 409. Bohadin, p. 237. 



276 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

to hasten his return to Europe by repeated intelli- 
gence of the dangerous machinations of his faithless 
brother and rival, or secretly conscious that the re- 
sources of the Crusade were unequal to the capture 
of Jerusalem, it is vain to inquire. But he sud- 
denly paused in his operations ; and, when its walls 
were within his view, proposed the appointment of a 
council, selected from among the barons of Palestine 
and the chiefs of the military orders, to decide upon 
oath if it were preferable to engage in the siege of the 
Holy City, or to make a diversion against Damascus 
or Cairo. To the general surprise and disappoint- 
ment, the council decided upon the expediency of de- 
ferring the enterprise before them ; and Richard, 
amid the discontent of the whole army, commenced 
a second and final retreat to the sea-coast. Yet, 
whatever were the motives of necessity or incon- 
stancy which dictated this resolve, he poignantly felt 
the mortification or shame of his failure ; and, when 
one of his followers led him to a height from whence 
he might take his last view of Jerusalem, he hid his 
face in his shield, exclaiming that he who was unable 
to rescue, was unworthy to look upon the Sepulchre 
of Christ.* 

Saladin was not slow to reap his advantage on the 
retreat of the crusaders; and, finding that Richard 
had continued his march from Jaffa to Acre, he poured 

* Hoveden, p. 715. Vinesauf, uhi supra. 



RICHARD CCEUR DE LION. 277 

down from the hills with his troops on the former 
city, and assaulted the place so unexpectedly, that 
numbers of the Christian garrison and inhabitants 
were slain in the streets, and the remainder only saved 
their lives by shutting themselves up in some of the 
towers. They had already been reduced to sue for a 
capitulation, when Richard arrived off the port to 
their succour. He had prepared to embark for Eu- 
rope before he heard of their danger; but fired with 
indignation that Saladin should have renewed the 
offensive while his foot was still on the strand of Pa- 
lestine, he threw himself into a galley, and, followed 
only by a few knights and archers in six other vessels, 
sailed for Jaffa, leaving his army to retrace their 
march after him along the coast. When his small 
squadron had approached the shore, finding that some 
of the garrison still held out, he plunged into the sea ; 
his attendants inspired by his heroic example, quickly 
followed, and the opposing Moslems on the beach were 
so dismayed by the fury of the attack, that they fled 
before this handful of assailants, and abandoned Jaffa 
to its deliverers. Though Richard, including the res- 
cued garrison, had with him only fifty-five knights, 
of whom but ten were mounted, and two thousand 
foot-soldiers, he displayed his contempt for the infidels 
by encamping without the gates ; and in this situa- 
tion, on the morrow of his arrival, the Turkish 
cavalry, recovering from their surprise, and ascer- 
taining the scantiness of his force, attacked him with 



278 



THE THIRD CRUSADE. 




ijfe^^^^"^ 



Richard Cceur dc Lion at the battle of Jaffa. 



overwhelming numbers. He not only sustained their 
repeated charges, but each time rushed into the thick- 
est of their squadrons at the head of his ten knights, 
and everywhere carried death and confusion into their 
ranks. Never had even he performed such prodigies 
of valour and personal strength ; whole squadrons of 
the quailing infidels fled before his single arm ; and 
the Mussulman writers themselves are the most ad- 
miring witnesses and warmest eulogists of these in- 
credible exploits.''' Night put an end to the unequal 



* This concurrent testimony of Christian and Mohammedan 
writers compels history to ascribe to Richard feats of personal he- 
roism, which might otherwise be dismissed as the dreams of romance. 



RICHARD CCEUR DE LION. 279 

combat; but so hopeless was Saladin of prevailing 
against the hero, that he raised the siege of Jaffa 
without any further attempt.'-' 

This was the last and most brilliant achievement 
of the lion-hearted king on the shores of Palestine ; 
and with it ended the third Crusade. The exertions 
of Richard brought on a fever which increased his 
longing desire to return to Europe ; and the awe in- 
spired by his prowess and victory facilitated his over- 
tures for a renewal of former negotiations. Saladin 
himself was weary of fruitless hostilities, and lan- 
guishing under a bodily decline, which in a few 
months bowed him to the grave. Richard consented 
to dismantle the fortifications of Ascalon, which, a.s 
the key of Egypt from the Syrian frontiers, was in 
the hands of the Christians an object of jealous dis- 

Sucli was the admiration which he extorted from his enemies, that 
Saphadiu, during his last action before Jaffa, observing him dis- 
mounted, sent him two Arabian horses, on one of which he con- 
tinued the conflict until nightfall. Some time before, the same 
Turkish prince had solicited and obtained, at the hands of the Chris- 
tian hero, the honour of knighthood for his son. But the most 
striking proof of the reality of his astonishing prowess, is the en- 
during teiTor in which his very memory was held by the Moslems ; 
for, above half a century after his fiery spirit had been quenched in 
the grave, '' his tremendous name was employed by Syrian mothers 
to silence their infants ; and if a horse suddenly started from his 
way, his rider was wont to exclaim, '■ Dost thou think King Richard 
is in the bush V Cuides tu que ce soit le Roi Richart .^" Gibbon, 
ch. lix. from Joinville. 

* A^inesauf, p. 412-421. Bohadin, p. 238-249. Abulfeda, 
p. 52. 



280 THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

quietude to the Sultan ; and the latter on his part 
agreed to leave them in unmolested possession of 
Tyre, Acre, and Jaffa, with all the maritime territory 
between the first and last of those cities ; to abstain 
also from attacking the territories of the Prince 
of Antioch and Count of Tripoli, and to grant all 
Christian pilgrims free access to the holy places of 
Jerusalem. Upon these terms the two monarchs con- 
cluded a truce between the nations of their respective 
faiths for three years and three months ; and Richard, 
embarking at Acre, bade a last adieu to the scene of 
his glory, and commenced that homeward voyage, of 
which we are in another place to relate the calami- 
tous issue.* 

''Such was the termination of the third Crusade". 
Its grand object in the recapture of Jerusalem had 
not been accomplished ; but the total ruin with which 
the affairs of the Latin kingdom were threatened by 
the fatal defeat at Tiberias had been averted; the 
tide of Mussulman conquest was arrested; and a 
great part of the sea-coast of Palestine, with its chain 
of fortresses, remained in the hands of the Christians. 
The recovery or preservation of this territory, which 
for eighty years deferred the final triumph of the 
Moslems, was chiefly attributable to the heroic achieve- 
ments of the English king ; and, but for his intemper- 
ance and caprice, even greater advantages might have 

* Vinesauf, p. 422. Bohadin, p. 260. 



RICHARD C(EUR DE LION. 281 

been reaped from his splendid exploits. Yet it may 
be doubted whether his want of complete success was 
not full as much produced by the political vices of the 
Latin states, as by the errors of his own conduct. 
The factions nursed in Palestine during the feeble 
reign of the leper Baldwin IV. had grown into uncon- 
trollable strength and violence; their quarrels were 
embraced by the crusaders from Europe; and even 
while the victories of Saladin threatened to involve 
all parties in a common ruin, the dissensions of the 
Christians were more dangerous to the general cause 
than the arms of their infidel enemies. The conflict- 
ing pretensions of aspirants to the Latin throne of 
Palestine supplied a constant subject of disunion. By 
the death of his consort Sybilla and her children, 
during the siege Of Acre, the worthless Lusignan had 
lost his only title to a matrimonial crown; and he 
found a formidable competitor in Conrad, the gallant 
prince of Tyre, who had espoused Isabella, or Meli- 
cent, sister of the late queen. From their personal 
enmity, the King of England supported the cause of 
Lusignan, and the French monarch that of Conrad 
and his consort. After the departure of Philippe, 
Richard, to suppress a civil war, found it necessary to 
recognise the royal title of Conrad, and consoled Lu- 
signan with the crown of Cyprus ; but this accommo- 
dation was scarcely concluded, when Conrad was mur- 
dered in the streets of Tyre by two of the Hassassins, 
or followers of a fjmatical Mohammedan chieftain, 



ZbZ THE THIRD CRUSADE. 

whose systematic employment of the dagger against 
their enemies introduced a new term into the lan- 
guages of Europe. By the partisans of Conrad, his 
murder was imputed to the instigation of Richard; 
and this charge was made the plea for new dissen- 
sions ; but all evidence of the open and fearless impe- 
tuosity of Plantagenet's temper is opposed to the 
belief that, if he had sought the life of Conrad, he 
would not have stooped to so perfidious and dastardly a 
mode of gratifying his enmity.'-' The widow of Con- 
rad accepted the hand of Henry, Count of Cham- 
pagne, who in right of this marriage was recognised, 
both by the public voice and the assent of Richard, as 
King of Jerusalem ;-f and his undisputed assumption 
of the visionary title at length removed one of the 



* Boliadin, indeed, (p. 225,) asserts that the murderers, who were 
taken and put to the torture, confessed that they were employed by 
the King of England; but both Vinesauf (p. 377) and Hoveden 
(p. 717) agree in reporting the declaration of the Hassassins, that 
they had killed Conrad in revenge for an injury which he had offered 
to their chief; and this version of the tale has great internal proba- 
bility. Hichard, in fact, since his reconciliation, had nothing to 
gain by the crime ; and Conrad himself so little suspected him as, 
on his death-bed, to desire his widow to commit the fortress of Tyre 
to the keeping of the English prince. No conclusion, either of the 
innocence or guilt of Richard, is fairly to be drawn from the excul- 
patory letter from the chief of the Hassassins, an evident forgery 
subsequently produced at his trial before the Imperial German Diet. 
Foedera, vol. i. 71. 

■j" For these political transactions during the third Crusade, see 
chiefly Yinesauf, p. 324, 377, 392. 



RICHARD CCEUR DE LION. 283 

means by which the factions of Palestine had aggra- 
vated the disasters of the Christian cause. 

But the Christians in Palestine were indebted for 
their safety, after the third Crusade, far less to any 
union among themselves than to the death of their 
formidable enemy. Saladin''' only survived his treaty 
with Richard a few months ; and on his decease the 
great empire which he had consolidated was almost 
immediately dissolved. In its division, three of his 
numerous sons erected distinct thrones at Cairo, Da- 
mascus, and Aleppo ; but most of his veteran soldiery 
preferred to range themselves under the standard of 
his brother Saphadin ; and at their head that prince 
carved out for himself, at the expense of his nephews, 
a considerable sovereignty in Syria, [a. d. 1193.] 

* The really great qualities of Saladin have sometimes been too 
absolutely lauded ; for, as Mr. Mills lias well observed, (^Hisl. of 
Cnimdcii, vol. ii. 82,) his character was but a " compound of dig- 
nity and baseness." He had established his throne over the Mos- 
lems by treachery and bloodshed ; and his first successes against the 
Christians had been stained by atrocious cruelty. But his govern- 
ment of his own people, after his power was secure, was mild and 
equitable ; as a Mussulman, in his latter years, he was eminently 
pious, just, and charitable ; and we have seen that, even toward ene- 
li.iies, he was sometimes capable of the most magnanimous and gene- 
rous conduct. He is, perhaps, the brightest exemplar in history of 
an Asiatic hero ; and his virtues, like the dark traits which ob- 
scured them, exhibit the genuine lineaments of his clime and race. 



THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 



285 




CHAPTER IV. 

%\n |0ttrtl] €xu$ix^t 

SECTION I.— THE FRENCH, GERMANS, AND ITALIANS UNITE 
IN THE CRUSADE. 




T this stage of the narra.- 
tive considerable difficulty is 
felt by the historian in ar- 
ranging chronologically the 
series of events that crowd 
I so rapidly upon him, and it 
'^^ must be understood that 



286 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

the opening sentences of this chapter relate to inci- 
dents that preceded by years what it is customary 
to call the Fourth Crusade. 

At the expiration of the three years' truce which 
the English king had negotiated, the dissensions of 
the infidels revived in the Christians the fond hope 
of reconquering Jerusalem ; and at the instigation of 
the military orders, a new Crusade* was proclaimed 
by Pope Celestin III. Throughout France and Eng- 
land, from whatever causes, the appeal was heard 
with indifference ; but in Germany the design was 
promoted by some momentary schemes of ambition 
which the emperor — the execrable Henry VI. — ap- 
pears to have cherished of aggrandizing himself in the 
East; and, supported by his influence, the preaching 
of the clergy in that country was so successful, that 
the Cross was enthusiastically taken by many princes 
and prelates of the empire, and by vast numbers of 
nobles and persons of inferior rank. Thus composed, 
three great armaments, all from Germany, succes- 
sively reached the port of Acre, and raised the most 



* As the exhortation of the pope to the nations of Europe to en- 
gage in this design was general, some writers have dignified the 
abortive result with the title of the Fourth Crusade ; and numbered 
the subsequent expedition, which was directed against the Byzantine 
Empire, as the Fifth of Nine. But the more usual, which seems 
also the more convenient division, restricts the term of distinct Cru- 
sades to Seven, or at most Eight, great eflforts, which were either 
produced by some signal occasion, such as the loss of Edessa or Je- 
rusalem, or else productive of some considerable event. 



FRENCH, GERMANS, AND ITALIANS. 



287 




Henry VI. Emjieror of Germany. 

confident anticipations among the Latins in the East 
of a decisive triumph over their infidel enemies. But 
the Mussuhnans both of Egypt and Syria, forgetting 
their civil feuds in the common danger of their re- 
ligion and empire, rallied around the standard of 
Saphadin; and though the combined chivalry of 
Germany and Palestine gained some victories in the 
field, these successes were always either marred by 
their dissensions, or counterbalanced by the elastic 
spirit of Turkish hostility, which started into new and 
vigorous action, as often as misconduct or exhaustion 
relaxed the efforts of the Christians. By the death 
of the emperor, the German princes and prelates were 
recalled through political interests to Europe; and at 
their departure they left the Latin possessions in 
Palestine only slightly enlarged by their aid. The 



288 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

general superiority, however, which their arms had 
asserted over the Mussulman power was useful in sus- 
taining the dignity and safety of the Christian state ; 
and though the nominal capital of the kingdom was 
still unrecovered, the German victories had given 
security to the throne of Henry of Champagne, whose 
real sovereignty extended over great part of the sea- 
coast of Syria. To these considerable fragments of 
the Latin monarchy of Palestine, Cyprus was soon 
after added, on the death of Henry, by the union of 
his queen, thus widowed for the third time, with 
Almeric of Lusignan, the successor of Guy in the sove- 
reignty of that island; and on the solemnization of 
this marriage at Acre, Almeric and Isabella assumed, 
in 1197, the joint title of King and Queen of Jeru- 
salem and Cyprus.* 

The exhortations of Pope Celestin III. had failed to 
reanimate the religious zeal of the chivalry of France : 
but a fresh impulse was given to their fanaticism 
when Innocent III., three years afterward, ascended 
the papal throne. The convenient precedent of the 
Saladin tithe might suggest to that celebrated Pontiff 
a tempting occasion for again taxing the clergy of 
Europe under the pretext of a new Crusade ; but per- 
haps the single motive of filling the papal coffers by 

* For all these transactions in Palestine, see Bernardus Thesaur. 
p. 813-818. Chron. Sdavormn, lib. iv. v. vi. (in Freter, Rerum 
Script. German, vol. ii.) Cont. Will. Tyr. lib. ii. Abulfeda, lib. 
iv. &c. 



I 



FRENCH, GERMANS, AND ITALIANS. 289 

this disgraceful expedient has been too confidently 
attributed to Innocent, in whom the ambitious desire 
of extending the spiritual and temporal dominion of 
the Holy See was at least as strong as any mere cu- 
pidity of gold. But whatever were his objects, he 
entered on the design of again arming Europe against 
the infidels with all the energy which distinguished 
his character. He wrote himself to the sovereigns of 
Christendom, exhorting them severally either to take 
the cross in person, or at least to contribute their 
forces and treasures to the sacred enterprise; and his 
legates were despatched throughout the kingdoms of 
the West to levy on all ecclesiastical bodies the 
fortieth part of their revenues, and to obtain the 
pecuniary subscription and personal services of the 
laity by the promises of indulgences and pardon for 
their sins. 

So productive were these efforts, that the free 
offerings of the princes and people exceeded the 
total amount imposed on the clergy; but the most 
powerful auxiliary of the papal design was a fanatical 
priest named Foulques, of Neuilly, near Paris, who 
professed to atone for a life of sin by dedicating its 
remains to the service of heaven ; and who, without 
the rude originality of the Hermit Peter, or the learn- 
ing and dignified virtues of St. Bernard, yet with a 
success little inferior to that of either, by the vehe- 
mence of his exhortations, and by his pretended reve- 
lations of the divine will, now kindled the fiame 

19 



290 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

of religious enthusiasm throughout Flanders and 
France.* 

When the fame of his preaching and his miracles 
had already prepared the public mind of those coun- 
tries for the sacred enterprise, the martial and fana- 
tical zeal of the French nobility was roused into action 
by the example which was offered to them at a great 
tournament in Champagne. There Thibaut, the 
youthful count of that province, and his cousin Louis, 
Earl of Blois, both of them nephews, by a common 
relationship, to the monarchs of France and England, 
and the former brother to the late King Henry of 
Jerusalem, resolved to exchange the martial sports for 
the sterner duties of chivalry, and solemnly devoted 
themselves and their fortunes to the service of the cross. 
[1200.] Their spirit was enthusiastically caught by 
the assembled knighthood ; their vows were embraced 
on the spot by Simon de Montfort, Lord of Mante, and 
a numerous band of the noblest chevaliers of France ; 
and, when intelligence of the inspiring design reached 

* Foulques did not live to contemplate the full consequences of 
his preaching. He died before the crusading armament sailed from 
Venice. Du Cange on Villehardouin, No. xxxvii. His denun- 
ciations were of the usual kind, and such as custom had made 
familiar to the ears of that generation ; and his oratory is described 
by contemporaries as plain, but impressive. Addressing Coeur de 
Lion, he said, " You have three daughters to dispose of in marriage, 
Avarice, Pride, and Luxury." " Well," replied Richard, " I give 
my pride to the Templars, my avarice to the monks of Citeaux, and 
my luxury to the bishops." — Rigord, Hisotriographer to Philippe- 
Auguste. 



FRENCH, GERMANS, AND ITALIANS. 291 

the court of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, brother-in- 
law of Thibaut, that prince, with a great body of 
Flemish knights, hastened to enrol himself in the holy 
cause. Meanwhile, in Italy and in Germany, the 
papal exhortations and promises of spiritual rewards 
had not been without their desired effect. In the 
former country, Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, bro- 
ther of the murdered Conrad of Tyre, and in the lat- 
ter, the Bishop of Halberstadt, both seconded by great 
numbers of knightly and plebeian warriors, assumed 
the cross ; and the King of Hungary, with his subjects, 
sealed the sincerity of their faith by the same test.''*' 

The French nobles did not suffer the ardour of their 
followers to cool by inaction. To forward the enter- 
prise and arrange its details, the three Counts of 
Champagne, Blois, and Flanders, with their principal 
associates, met twice in deliberation at Soissons and 
at Compeigne ; and the result of their councils was a 
resolution to avoid the disasters which the fatal expe- 
rience of former Crusades had shown were the inevi- 
table attendants of a land expedition to Palestine, 
and to imitate the maritime passage of Philippe-Au- 
guste and Richard Plantagenet. But, as the barons 
of the inland province of Champagne could not com- 
mand the same means of naval transport as those 
sovereigns, they determined upon attempting to pur- 

* Vita Innocent. III. (apud Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. vol. iii.) 
p. 506-526. Histoire cle la Prise de Constantinople, par Geoffrey 
de Villehardouin, Ed. du Cange, paragraph No. i. 



292 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

chase the aid of one of the maritime republics of 
Italy, who, throughout the Crusades, had been wont 
to hire out their services both as the common carriers 
and allies of the Western pilgrims. Among these 
states, Venice had already attained a preponderance 
of power and resources ; and to that city, with full 
powers to negotiate on theirbehalf, the French barons 
despatched six chosen deputies, and in the number 
Geoffroy de Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, to 
w^hose pen or dictation we are indebted for a simple 
and expressive narration of the whole Crusade. 

The ducal crown of Venice was at this time worn 
by Enrico Dandolo, who, at the extraordinary age of 
ninety-three years, and in almost total blindness, still 
preserved the vigorous talents, the active heroism, 
and the ambitious or patriotic spirit of his youth. 
He received the noble envoys with honour ; and, after 
the purport of their embassy had been regularly sub- 
mitted to the councils of the state, invited them to 
meet the assembled citizens in the Place of St. Mark. 
There, before a multitude of more than ten thousand 
persons, the haughty barons of France threw them- 
selves upon their knees to implore the assistance of 
the commercial republicans in recovering the Sepul- 
chre of Christ. Their tears'^' and eloquence pre- 

* These doughty champions of chivahy were, as Gibbon has ob- 
served, by habit great weepers. Mult plorant, &c., is the phrase of 
Yillehardouin on almost every occasion of excitement. This name, 
which afterward became so conspicuous in the annals of the East, 



294 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

vailed; the price of the desired aid had been left by 
the envoys to the assessment of the doge and his 
immediate council ; and for the sum of eightj'-five 
thousand silver marks — less than £200,000 of our 
modern English money, and therefore not an unrea- 
sonable demand — the republic engaged to transport 
four thousand five hundred knights, nine thousand 
esquires and men-at-arms, with their horses and equip- 
ments, and twenty thousand foot-soldiers, to any part 
of the coasts of the East which the service of God 
might require, to provision them for nine months, and 
to escort and aid them with a fleet of fifty galleys ; 
but only on condition that the money should be paid 
before embarkation, and that wdiatever conquests 
might be made should be equally divided between the 
barons and the Venetian state.* 

On the return of the envoys to France, these terms 
received a joyful approval from their associates ; but 
several untoward circumstances arose to obstruct the 
performance of the treaty. The young Count of 
Champagne, the ardent promoter and destined chief 
of the enterprise, was already stretched on a death- 
took its rise from a village, or castle, in the diocese of Troye, between 
Bar and Arcy. The elder branch of the family, to which the mar- 
shal belonged, expired in 1400, and the younger, which acquired the 
principality of Achaia, merged in the family of Savoy. Michaud, 
ii. 46. 

* Andreae Danduli, Chron. Venet. (in Script. Rer. Ital. vol. sii.) 
p. 320-323, in which the original treaty is given. Villehardouin, 
No. xiii. xiv. 



FRENCH, GERMANS, AND ITALIANS. 295 

bed ; and on his decease some time was lost before the 
mutual jealousy of the French barons, which prevented 
their electing one of their own body to succeed him, 
was reconciled by the choice of a foreign leader in the 
person of the Marquis of Montferrat. Many of the 
nobles and their followers had, meanwhile, in incon- 
stancy or impatience, wholly deserted their engage- 
ments, or found their own passage to Acre: so that 
when at length, nearly two years after the tourna- 
ment in Champagne, the Marquis Boniface mustered 
the French, Italian, and Flemish confederates at 
Venice, their numbers fell short of expectation, not- 
withstanding the junction of some German crusaders; 
and they were utterly unable to subscribe the stipu- 
lated cost of the enterprise. [1202.] Though the 
Marquis and the Counts of Blois and Flanders made a 
generous sacrifice of all their valuables, above thirty 
thousand marks were yet wanting to complete the 
full payment; and as the republic, with true mer- 
cantile caution, refused to permit the sailing of the 
fleet until the whole amount of the deficiency should 
be lodged in her treasury, the enterprise must have 
been abandoned, if the Doge had not suggested an 
equivalent. He proposed that, upon condition of the 
crusaders assisting in the reduction of the strong city 
of Zara, on the Dalmatian coast, which had revolted 
from the republic, their payment of the remaining 
sum should be postponed until the conclusion of the 
Holy War; and despite of his years and infirmities. 



296 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

he engaged, on their assent, himself to take the Cross, 
and to lead the naval forces of his republic.'-' 

The confederate barons gladly acceded to this ex- 
pedient, when another obstacle was opposed to its 
adoption, which had nearly frustrated the whole en- 
terprise : the peo^^le of Zara had placed themselves 
under the sovereignty of the King of Hungary; and 
the pope, through hi,s legate, positively forbade the 
crusaders to turn their arms against the subjects of a 
prince who had himself taken the Cross. But the 
Venetians, who entertained little reverence for the 
authority of the Holy See, succeeded in persuading 
their more scrupulous allies to disregard the prohi- 
bition of Innocent ; the desire of honourably discharg- 
ing their obligations prevailed with the French barons 
over their fear of the papal displeasure; and, although 
the Marquis of Montferrat, their leader, abstained 
from accompanying them, they sailed to Zara with 
their followers in the Venetian fleet, which was com- 
manded by the venerable doge, as he had promised, in 
person. Zara was deemed in that age one of the 
strongest cities in Europe : but the inhabitants, after 
a siege of only five days, were terrified or compelled 
into a surrender; and though their lives were spared, 

* Notwitlistanding the expression of Villeliardouin, that the vene- 
rable Doge had lost his sight by a wound, it may be doubted whether 
he was totally blind ; for the statement of his descendant and chroni- 
cler, much more pi-obable in itself, is only that he was visu dcbilis. 
Danduli, Chron. p. 322. 



FRENCH, GERMANS, AND ITALIANS. 297 

the city was pillaged with great cruelty, and both its 
houses and defences razed to the ground. In his 
first burst of indignation at their disobedience. Inno- 
cent excommunicated both the crusaders and Vene- 
tians ; and when the French barons sent a deputation 
of their number to Kome to express their penitence, 
he assured them of pardon for their sins, only upon 
condition of their making restoration of their booty to 
the people of Zara, and withdrawing from all alliance 
with the more stubborn republicans, who still set his 
spiritual censures at defiance. The fanatic De Mont- 
fort, alone, whose subsequent share in the Crusade 
against the Albigenses has given a horrible celebrity 
to his name, showed full obedience to the papal man- 
date by wholly abandoning his associates; but the 
rest of the French nobles and their troops continued 
to winter with the Venetians at Zara, where, after its 
surrender, the Marquis of Montferrat joined them ; 
and it was during this season of repose that an en- 
tirely new destination was given to the combined 
armament.* 



* Danduli, Chron. uhi supra; Vita Innocent. III. p. 529-531. 
Villehardouin, No. xs. liv. 



298 



THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 




Street in Constantinople. 



SECTION" m. 



AFFAIRS OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 

jO explain the occasion of a change 
of purpose in the crusaders, which 
, produced one of the most singular 
and memorable enterprises in his- 
, tory, it is now necessary to revert 
to the state of the Byzantine em- 
pire; the annals of which, during the thirteenth cen- 
tury, have been purposely reserved for a brief and 




THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 299 

rapid notice in this place. Our retrospect will ascend 
to the reign of the first Alexius : the crisis of whose 
fortunes was involved and has been described in the 
transactions of the earliest Crusade. Following 
closely on the triumphant career of the Latins 
through the Lesser Asia, Alexius richly gathered the 
fruits of victories, which they were impatient to 
abandon for the ulterior objects of their great enter- 
prise; and, as the Turkish forces were successively 
withdrawn from the shores of the Propontis and 
^gean sea to the defence of the interior, the emperor 
restored to the Byzantine dominion the whole circuit 
of the sea-coast from Nice to Tarsus, or from the 
Bos^Dhorus to the Syrian gates. Even in the interior 
of Asia Minor, the Sultan of Nice, after the loss of 
that capital, had been compelled to remove the seat of 
his throne from thence to Iconium, above three hun- 
dred miles from Constantinople; and, amid the ex- 
haustion of the Turkish power in its struggle with 
the crusading invaders, Alexius, by policy and arms, 
so diligently improved his advantage, that, before his 
decease, the Greek Empire, which, at the outset of 
his reign, was straitened and shaken on all sides by 
hostile pressure, and seemed to rock to its founda- 
tions, had not only assumed an aspect of renovated 
strength, but expanded with offensive force against 
its former assailants.* 

* Anna Comnena, Alexiad, lib. ix.-xiv. 



300 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

In the succeeding reign of his son John, termed in 
derision the handsome, or Calo Johannes, a prince more 
honourably distinguished both for his pacific virtues 
and warHke qualities, [1118,] internal concord and 
happiness were preserved by a mild and vigorous 
administration ; while the dignity of the empire was 
asserted, and its security increased, by twenty-five 
years of victorious contest with the Turks. From 
the Latin princes of Syria, the Greek emperor won 
equal respect by the powerful assistance which, in the 
interval between the first and second Crusades, he 
rendered them in repelling the infidels, and by the 
vigour with which he obliged Raymond, the reigning 
Prince of Antioch, to do homage to him for his pos- 
sessions. Manuel, the second surviving son of John, 
who was preferred in the succession to an elder bro- 
ther both by parental and popular favour, inherited 
his father's martial spirit with his throne ; but did not 
emulate the worth of his private life and civil govern- 
ment. [1143.] During an active reign of thirty- 
seven years, the ambition of Manuel, rather than the 
necessity of his position, involved his empire in con- 
tinual wars, not only with the Turks and Hungarians, 
its natural enemies on the Asiatic and European fron- 
tiers, but also with the ancient foes of his house, the 
Normans of the two Sicilies. In the hostilities, in- 
deed, which kindled anew the quarrel of the pre- 
ceding century, Manuel was not the first aggressor. 
Reviving the magnificent design of Robert Guiscard 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 301 

for the subjugation of the Byzantine empire, Roger, 
King of Sicily, upon pretext of some slight shown 
to his ambassadors at Constantinople, despatched a 
great armament into the Ionian and ^gean seas ; 
and the Normans, disembarking from their ships, 
reduced Corfu and other islands, and overran the 
continent of Greece. Manuel was at the time absent 
from his capital ; but his return and revengeful 
activity soon terminated the triumph of the invaders. 
With the powerful co-operation of the Venetians, 
his navy outnumbered that of the Normans, and 
swept the seas of their galleys ; his troops, which he 
led in person, overpowered the garrisons which they 
had left in Greece ; and a single campaign sufficed to 
clear the empire of its audacious assailants. It was 
then that the ambitious hopes of Manuel rose with 
his success; and the glorious issue of a just and de- 
fensive war suggested dreams of aggrandizement, 
which embraced the sovereignty of Italy, and the 
reunion on his brows of the imperial crowns of the 
East and West.* 

With the plea of punishing the Norman invaders 
of his states, a Byzantine army, under the command 
of Palisologus, a leader of noble birth and approved 
valour, was landed upon the shores of southern Italy ; 
and favoured by the declining health and death of 



* Johannis Cinnami Historia, lib. ii. iii. Nicetas Cliouiates, in 
Manuel Comnen. lib. i. iii. ad. c. 6. (Both in Scriptor Byzanti) 



302 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

the Sicilian king, and by the affection of the people 
for the ancient community of language and faith 
which had bound them to the Greek empire, the 
whole of Apulia and Calabria was rapidly reannexed 
to the Byzantine dominion. From this epoch, 
throughout the subsequent contests between the 
Western emperor, Frederic Barbarossa, on the one 
side, and the papacy and Lombard republics on the 
other, the intrigues, the blandishments, and the gold 
of Manuel, were unsparingly employed to extend his 
influence in Italy, and to promote his visionary scheme 
of wresting the sovereignty of the whole Peninsula 
from the German usurper of the Roman title. To 
the pope he threw out the lure of terminating the 
schism of the Latin and Greek churches; to the 
Lombard cities he was prodigal both of money and 
promises ; but the intrinsic weakness of the Greek 
empire was unequal to the prosecution of his ambi- 
tious design ; its weight was severely felt in the 
balance of Italian politics ; and when the pope and 
the Lombard republics had terminated their great 
struggle with Barbarossa, the subsidies and the nego- 
tiations of Manuel were alike disregarded. In South- 
ern Italy fortune was equally capricious to the Eastern 
empire ; the death of his brave lieutenant Paloeologus 
was followed by the loss of his transient conquests ; 
and, in a truce concluded with William the Bad, the 
successor of Roger on the Sicilian throne, in which 
that prince acknowledged himself the vassal of the 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 303 

Byzantine throne, the dignity and pretensions of 
Manuel were only saved by his abandonment of the 
Italian soil. [1156.] In other quarters the warlike 
reign of Manuel was signalized by victories both over 
the Hungarians and Turks, though in his last years 
its splendour was clouded by a severe defeat which he 
sustained from the infidels in the Pisidian mountains. 
To his own subjects, even his more successful wars 
were productive of heavy burdens; his private life 
was licentious, and his political character was stained, 
as we have seen, Avith the reproach of pretended 
friendship and treacherous hostility to the Latins in 
the Second Crusade.* 

With the death of Manuel ended the greatness of 
the Comnenian race. His infant son and successor, 
Alexius II., was oppressed by a perfidious guardian 
and daring usurper of his own blood, Andronicus, 
himself a grandson of the first Alexius, who, after de- 
posing and murdering his imperial ward, himself ter- 
minated a tyrannical and bloody reign of less than 
three years by an ignominious and cruel death. The 
popular insurrection in which he fell was headed by 
Isaac Angelus, another member, by descent in the 
female line, of the Comnenian family. The leader or 
tool of the insurgents was raised to the throne, and 
under his feeble reign of ten years, the empire 
crumbled into ruin. A revolt of the Bulgarians was 

*Cinnamus, lib. iv.-vi. Nicetas, ad fin. Manuel. 



304 



THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 




Isaac Angelus. 



provoked by his tyranny in seizing their flocks and 
herds to supply the wasteful pomp of his nujDtials : 
and his tame acquiescence in their assertion of inde- 
pendence severed their country from the Byzantine 
crown, after a possession of nearly two centuries, and 
established the second kingdom of Bulgaria under a 
race of their ancient princes. The inglorious and 
indolent reign of Isaac was frequently, and perhaps 
justly, threatened by abortive conspiracies; but his 
worst and successful enemy was his own ungrateful 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 305 

brother Alexius, whom he had redeemed from a Turk- 
ish prison, and who repaid the obligation by sur- 
prising his security, depriving him of his eyes, con- 
signing him to a dungeon, and seating himself on his 
throne. The son of the deposed prince, who was 
named also Alexius, a boy only twelve years of age, 
was spared by the pity or contempt of his uncle ; and 
he had subsequently contrived to escape into Italy, 
when the news of the assembly of a great crusading 
armament at Venice, inspired his youthful hopes that 
its leaders might be induced, by adequate offers, to 
defer the ultimate object of their enterprise for a 
season, and to direct their powerful arms to the re- 
storation of his father. The entreaties of the young 
prince for their aid were supported at Venice by am- 
bassadors from his protector, the Duke of Swabia, 
who had married his sister : but it was at Zara, dur- 
ing the inaction of winter, that the friends of Alexius 
were permitted more successfully to negotiate a treaty 
with the Latin barons and Venetian republic, which 
was eventually to deliver the imperial inheritance of 
his house into the detested hands of foreign and bar- 
barous spoilers.* 

To induce the Venetians to accept the overtures of 
the young Greek prince, there were not wanting 
many motives both of passion and policy. The 



* Nicetas, in Adron. Comnen., in Isaac Angel, in Alex. Angel, ad 
lib. iii. &c. 

20^ 



306 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

alliance between their state and the Emperor Manuel 
Comnenus in the last age, had been converted, by his 
protection of Ancona, the commercial rival of the re- 
public, into deadly enmity ; in revenge for a general 
confiscation of the property of the Venetians in his 
ports, to which Manuel was provoked by their inso- 
lence, their fleets had ravaged the Byzantine islands 
and coasts; and though the emperor, by a final sub- 
mission to their demands, had appeased the haughty 
republic, the hatred of the people of Constantinople, 
during the license of subsequent revolutions, had re- 
peatedly exposed the Venetian merchants in that 
capital to spoliation and massacre."^ The arms of the 
republic, or the dread of her vengeance, generally, 
indeed, obtained indemnification for these outrages; 
but repeated broils cherished mutual national anti- 
pathy; and when the Pisans availed themselves of 
the temper of the Greeks to supplant the Venetians 
in their commercial relations with the empire, the ex- 
asperation of the latter people had reached its height. 
By assisting young Alexius, their republic would 
therefore both revenge her wrongs and regain her 
commercial advantages in the East. The politic 
Dandolo was not slow to anticipate the benefits 
which would accrue to his country from such an 
alliance; and he eagerly employed all his influence 



* Cinnamus, lib. vi. c. 10. Nicetas, in Mamcel. lib. ii. c. 5; in 
Alex. Man. Filio, c. 11 ; in Isaac, lib. ii. c. 10. 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 307 

with the confederate barons to engage them in the 
design * 

For its adoption even as a means of advancing the 
ultimate object of the Crusade, some plausible argu- 
ments might be adduced. As the possession of Egypt 
was supposed to form the principal support of the 
Turkish arms in Palestine, the original design of the 
crusaders had been to attack the infidels at that 
source of their power. But it was now contended by 
the Venetians, that any loss of time in deferring the 
projected invasion of Egypt would be richly repaid to 
the profit of the Crusade, by the advantages likely to 
arise from the command of the Byzantine resources, 
which young Alexius offered as the price of his 
father's restoration. The proposals, indeed, of the 
imperial exile, were of the most tempting nature; for 
he engaged not only to pay two hundred thousand 
marks among the crusaders as soon as his parent 
should be re-established on the throne; but also to 
put an end to the schism of the Greek and Latin 
churches by submitting his empire to the spiritual 
dominion of the Roman See; and either to combine 
personally with the crusaders, at the head of the 
Byzantine forces, in the subsequent expedition against 
Egypt, or in default of his . own presence, to send ten 
thousand men at his charge for one year, and to 



* Nicetas, in Alex. lib. iii. c. 9, expressly accuses the Doge and 
Venetians as the instigators of the French crusaders. 



308 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

maintain five hundred knights during his life for the 
defence of Palestine/'' These promised benefits to 
the cause of the church and the Crusade might at first 
have a powerful influence in winning assent even 
among the more devout leaders of the war; but it 
must be doubted whether the motives of their subse- 
quent conduct were equally pure and disinterested; 
and since the diversion of their arms against Zara had 
familiarized the minds of the crusading host to the 
postponement of their vows, it may be suspected that 
the successful siege and sack of that city had but 
awakened their appetite for a more splendid achieve- 
ment and a richer booty. 

The influence of such feelings is detected in their 
second and more deliberate contempt of the prohi- 
bition, which Innocent III. now fulminated against 
their design. The Byzantine usurper, anticipating 
the proposal of young Alexius, had, by a solemn em- 
bassy to Rome, offered to place the religious affairs of 
his empire under the government of the Latin papacy, 
and requested the presence of a legate from Rome; 
and the ambitious Innocent, hoping thus to secure 
the submission of the Greek Church, as the price 
of keeping the reigning tyrant on the Byzantine 
throne, promised him protection against his ene- 
mies. 

The pontiff", therefore, proceeded positively to 

* Villehardouin, No. xlvi. Chron. Danduli, lib. x. c. 3. 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 309 

interdict the crusaders from espousing the cause 
of the imperial exile, or arrogating to themselves 
any authority for the redress of wrongs among 
Christians, or the suppression of schism, for 
which it was the province of the Holy See alone 
to provide. 

But, by the Venetians, the commands of the pope 
were immediately treated with such open disregard, 
that the cardinal legates, whom he had despatched 
to Zara to enforce them, hopelessly quitted the place 
and sailed direct for Palestine; and their example 
was followed by a number of barons and other 
crusaders, including many most renowned for their 
devout and warlike spirit, who conscientiously 
dreaded to incur the papal censures, by turning 
their arms against the Eastern Empire; while not a 
few disguised, under the same pretext, their secret 
dread to engage in an enterprise so j)erilous and dis- 
proportioned to the assembled force of the con- 
federates. 

Since, indeed, submission to the papal authority 
was identified with every pious sentiment of the 
age, it is impossible not to conclude that, in the 
minds of the remaining leaders and soldiery, the 
temptations of glorious or gainful adventure had 
triumphed over religious considerations; and chiefly 
through the personal persuasions, as it is said, of the 
Venetian Doge, the proposals of young Alexius, de- 
spite of the impending thunders of the Vatican, were 



;io 



THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 



finally accepted by the marquis of Montferrat, the 
Counts of Flanders, Blois, and St. Paul, with eight 
other great French barons, and the majority of their 
followers.* 

* Yilleliardouin, No. xlv. xlvii. lii. Vita Innocent III. p. 533. 
Ejusdem Epistolse, No. Ixvii &c. 




EXPEDITION AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE. 311 




Dandolo, Doge of Venice. 



SECTIOiT in. 



EXPEDITION AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE. 



HOWEVER apparently inadequate for 
/ the conquest of an ancient empire, the 
£ armament wherewith the Doge of 
Venice and the confederate barons 
now sailed for Constantinople, was of 
its kind the most comjDlete and formidable which the 
world had yet witnessed. The fleet was composed of 
fifty great galleys of war, one hundred and twenty 
flat-bottomed horse-transports, called palanders or 




312 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

huissiers,^ two hundred and forty vessels filled with 
troops and warlike engines, and seventy store-ships 
laden with provisions. On board this navy of nearly 
five hundred sail — of which the enumeration conveys 
so magnificent an idea of the wealth and power of the 
great republic — there were embarked, under the con- 
federate barons of the Crusade, six thousand cavalry, 
composed of two thousand knights with their esquires 
and sergeants, or mounted attendants, and ten thou- 
sand foot : besides the Venetian sea and land forces, 
of which the numbers might be loosely estimated at 
twenty thousand more.f Although the Byzantine 
usurper was early apprized of the destination and 
force of this hostile armament, he made not a single 
effort to oppose its course; the crusaders w^ere per- 
mitted successively, during a tardy navigation, to re- 
fresh themselves and their horses, and to replenish 
their provisions on the coasts and islands of Greece; 
and they finally approached the port of Constanti- 



* The origin of the former term for such a description of naval 
transport has been lost ; the latter is derived from the huis, or door 
in the side of the vessel, which was let down as a drawbridge for the 
purpose of shipping and landing the horses. Du Cange, on Ville- 
hardouin, No. xiv. 

f According to Sanuto, Vite de Duclii de Venezia, (in Script. Rer. 
Ital. vol. xxii.) p. 528, the land forces of the republic in the expedi- 
tion were four hundred and fifty cavalry and eight thousand foot. 
But after the first siege of Constantinople, Villehardouin (No. clii.) 
estimates the total combined army of French and Venetians at only 
twenty thousand men. 



EXPEDITION AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE. 313 

nople itself without having encountered an enemy. 
The Byzantine navy, which, it is said, had but lately 
numbered sixteen hundred vessels of war, might have 
sufficed to harass, and even to destroy, on its passage, 
an armament, so encumbered with horses and stores: 
but the Greek admiral, Michael Struphnos, brother-in- 
law of the usurper, had, in the baseness of his avarice, 
broken up the hulls of the shipping, that he might 
sell, for his private profit, the masts, rigging, and iron 
work ; and the port of Constantinople now contained 
only twenty galleys. The shores of the Propontis 
might have furnished abundant timber for the con- 
struction of a new navy : but the eunuchs of the palace, 
to whom the charge of the imperial forests was in- 
trusted for the purpose of the chase, would not suffer 
a tree to be felled for the public defence. To this and 
every other object of patriotism, the whole nation in- 
deed was alike insensible : for the unwarlike and de- 
generate Greeks, as a race in whom the despotism of 
centuries had extinguished every spark of generous 
shame, beheld in cowering apathy the approach of a 
detested enemy; and without favouring the cause of 
the younger Alexius, the people both of the capital 
and provinces were equally indifferent to the danger 
of the tyrant who filled their throne.* 

If that usurper himself, or his adherents, had been 



* Villehardouin. No. Ivi. Ivii. Rliamnusius, De Bello Constanti- 
nopoliiano, &c. lib. i. p. 33. Nicetas, (in Alexio), lib. iii. c. 9. 



314 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

capable of exerting even the passive courage of a de- 
fence, the natural strength and resources of the capital 
might have defied the efforts of assailants, whom the 
able-bodied inhabitants outnumbered at the lowest 
estimate as ten to one. When the Venetian navy 
arrived before the walls of Constantinople, and the 
gorgeous city, which the admiration of the crusaders 
deemed well worthy of being the mistress and queen 
of the world, burst in all her magnitude and splendour 
upon their astonished gaze, there was no heart so 
stout, is the simple and emphatic confession of the 
noble companion and chronicler of the adventure, but 
recoiled with dread at the spectacle of her massive 
ramparts and gigantic towers ; for never surely had so 
great an enterprise been essayed.* But with the awe 
which the bravest might not feel ashamed to confess, 
was not the less mingled a magnanimous spirit which 
rose with the danger; and each warrior, looking upon 
his arms, reflected with unshaken resolution that the 
hour was at hand in which these must serve the need, 
and would suffice to insure the event, of glorious 
achievement. As a strong wind swept the armament 
past the walls of the majestic capital toward the op- 
posite shore, the fleet was there brought to anchor; 

^ Et sachiez que ilne ot si hardicuite cceur ne fremist, et ce mefut 
merveil, car oneques si grande affaire ne fat enterpris — (and know 
that no one was so bold that his heart did not tremble ; and no 
wonder, for never was so great an enterprise undertaken.) Villehar- 
douin, No. Ixvi. 



I 



EXPEDITION AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE. 315 

and the chivalry disembarking, took possession of the 
Asiatic suburb of Chrysopolis, the modern Scutari, 
and during nine days reposed in an imperial palace 
and gardens. This interval of inaction was marked 
by some negotiations, in which the Byzantine usurper 
offered to expedite their march through Asia Minor 
against the infidels, but menaced them with de- 
struction if their purpose was hostile to his state; 
while the Doge and barons sternly replied, that they 
had entered the empire in the cause of Heaven to 
avenge the wrongs which he had committed, and 
boldly admonished him that if he hoped for mercy he 
must descend from the throne which he had unjustly 
seized.* 

After this declaration, they prepared to cross the 
Bosphorus to the European shore, — the whole body 
of the chivalry being divided into six corps or battles, 
two composed of Flemish knights with their attendant 
archers under Count Baldwin and his brother, three 
of French crusaders led respectively by the Counts of 
Blois and St. Paul, and the Lord of Montmorency, and 
the sixth or reserve of Italians and Germans under 
the marquis of Montferrat. The knights and ser- 
geants embarked in the palanders, with their horses 
ready saddled and caparisoned; the Venetian galleys 
took them in tow; and, in this order, they stood 
across the strait toward the European suburb of 

* Villehardouin, No. Iviii.-lxxxi. 



316 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

Galata, which commands the entrance of the port. 
The Greek cavalry were drawn out on the beach in 
far superior force to oppose their landing : but when 
the knights, as soon as the water reached only to 
their girdle, leaped from the vessels, lance in hand, the 
enemy immediately fled ; and the horses being 
brought on shore, the cavaliers mounted, pursued the 
flying squadrons, and captured the imperial camp 
without striking a blow. On the following morning, 
after a faint sally by the Greeks, the assailants en- 
tered the town of Galata with the fugitives; the chain 
which from thence secured the mouth of the harbour 
was broken ; and the whole Venetian fleet entering 
the port of Constantinople in triumph, the remains of 
the imperial navy either fell into their hands, or were 
driven on shore and burned.* 

Though the port was thus captured, the gigantic 
works, by which the city itself was completely en- 
closed and separated from the suburbs, might still bid 
defiance to the efforts of the crusaders: but their 
courage and confidence were unbounded. Though 
their numbers were insufficient to observe more than 
a single front of the walls, they determined to com- 
mence a regular siege; and this magnanimous reso- 
lution presents the singular and amazing example of 
the investment of the largest and strongest capital in 
the world by a few thousand men. The perils and 

* Villehardouin, No. Ixxxii. Nicetas, (in Alexio,') lib. iii. c. 10. 



EXPEDITION AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE. 317 

the hardihood of this extraordinary enterprise were 
enhanced by the privations under which it was prose- 
cuted. Of flour and salt provisions, the confederates 
had a supply but for three weeks left; clouds of Greek 
cavalry confined their few foragers to the camp; and 
their only fresh meat was obtained by the slaughter 
of their own horses. Delay was therefore far more to 
be dreaded than the resistance of the enemy ; and the 
preparatory operations of the siege were urged with 
superhuman exertions. The possession of the har- 
bour determined the point of attack ; and against the 
walls on that side two hundred and fifty great pro- 
jectile and battering engines were planted. When 
by incredible labour the ditch had been filled up, and 
some impression made upon the defences, the French 
and Venetians agreed to attempt a simultaneous 
assault : the former from their approaches against the 
land faces; the latter from their galleys upon the 
fronts which overlooked the port. Standing upon 
the raised deck of his vessel, with the gonfalon, or 
great banner of St. Mark, floating over his head, the 
venerable Doge himself led the naval attack; and 
such was the ardour excited by his presence, his 
voice, and his example, that the line of galleys was 
boldly rowed to the beach under the walls; by 
ladders from the foot of the ramparts, and by draw- 
bridges let down upon their battlements from the 
masts of the loftier vessels, the defences were sur- 
mounted ; and the banner of the republic was planted 



318 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

on one of the twenty-five towers which were carried 
by the assailants. 

But meanwhile the attack on the land side had 
been less successful; every gallant effort of the 
French chivalry to scale the walls through the imper- 
fect breaches had been repulsed by the assistance of 
some Pisan colonists and the valour of the Varangian, 
or Anglo-Saxon and Danish guards, ever the firmest 
support of the Byzantine throne;* and the numerous 
cavalry of the Greeks, pouring from the gates, 
threatened to surround and overwhelm the scanty 
array of the exhausted crusaders. The Doge learn- 
ing their danger, after setting fire to the quarter of 
the city which he had entered, and which was thus 
reduced to ashes, drew off his triumphant forces to 
the succour of his fainting allies; and the pusillani- 
mous Greeks, without daring a closer or prolonged 
encounter, disgracefully retired within the shelter of 
their walls. The confederates passed the succeeding 
night in eager rather than anxious suspense : but such 

* On the subject of the Anglo-Saxon emigrations which filled the 
ranks of the Varangian guards of the Byzantine throne, there is some 
difference of opinion. Du Cange, indeed, (Notes on Villehardouin, 
No. Ixxxix. &c.,) labours to prove that these Varangians came from 
the northern continent of Europe only : but the words of Villehar- 
douin are explicit, Anglois et Danois. It is not probable that a 
French knight could have confounded their race ; and his statement 
is in agreement with the fact, that impatience of the Norman tyranny 
had, ever since the epoch of the Conquest, driven multitudes of the 
bolder spirits among the oppressed English to seek a more honourable 
existence in foreign countries. 



EXPEDITION AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE. 319 

was the terror with which the usurper Alexius was 
seized at the balanced success of the conflict, that, 
under cover of the darkness, he basely fled from his 
capital with a part of the imperial treasures. On the 
discovery of his absence, the trembling nobles of the 
palace drew his blind and captive brother Isaac from 
the dungeon to the throne; and, when morning 
dawned, the leaders of the crusaders were astonished 
by an embassy from the restored emperor, announcing 
the revolution, desiring the presence of his son, and 
inviting them also to receive his grateful acknow- 
ledgments.'" 

The first proceeding of the confederates, on the re- ( 
ceipt of this message, was to depute two barons and 
two Venetians to wait upon the emperor with their / 
felicitations, and with a less welcome demand for the 
fulfilment of the engagements which his son had con- 
tracted in his name. While he admitted that their 
services were entitled to the highest recompense 
which was his to bestow, Isaac heard with consterna- 
tion the extent of the conditions which he was re- 
quired to ratify: the payment of two hundred thou- 
sand marks of silver, the employment of the imperial 
forces in the service of the Crusade, and the sub- 
mission of the Greek Church to the spiritual authority 
of the pope. But the immediate subscription of the 

* Villehardouin, No. Ixxxii.-xcix. Danduli, Chron. p. 321, 322 
Nicetas, (in Alexio), lib. iii. ad Jin. Vitas Innocent. III. c. 91, p. 
533, 534. 



320 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

emperor to these onerous terms was peremptorily 
insisted upon, and, however reluctantly, obtained. 
On the return of the envoys to the camp, young 
Alexius Avas permitted to make his triumphant entry 
into the city, attended by the Latin chiefs; and the 
joint coronation of the aged emperor and his son, 
which was joyfully celebrated, seemed to announce a 
peaceful conclusion to the recent struggle. This fal- 
lacious promise of concord between two nations so 
mutually obnoxious as the Latins and Greeks, was of 
short duration. To satisfy the rapacious demands of 
their deliverers, the emperors, in the low state of the 
Byzantine treasury, were compelled to make many 
grievous exactions from their subjects : the warlike 
Franks cared not to conceal their insolent disdain for 
a pusillanimous people : and, above all, the veneration 
of the Greeks for the peculiar forms and doctrines of 
their faith — the only symptoms of virtuous feeling 
which, discernible as it is throughout the long annals 
of their degradation, may command some share of our 
respect — was outraged by the undisguised design of 
subjugating their church to the papal yoke. From 
the very altar of the Cathedral of St. Sophia, the 
Patriarch of Constantinople was compelled, at the dic- 
tation of the crusaders, to proclaim the spiritual 
supremacy of the Koman Pontiff; and the people 
were required to subject their consciences to the doc- 
trines and discipline of a church which they had ever 
been taught to regard with horror as schismatic and 



EXPEDITION" AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE. 321 

heretical. By these measures, their political and re- 
ligious antipathy was extended to the young emperor, 
as the ally and creature of the detested foreigners ; 
and the conduct of Alexius himself did not tend to 
win the favour, or to command the respect, of his 
offended subjects. While the boisterous orgies and 
rude freedoms, which marked the social intercourse 
of the "Western Nations, shocked the superior refine- 
ment or ceremonial pride of the Greeks, the young 
emperor, regardless alike of the difference in national 
manners, and of his own dignity, continued to visit 
the quarters, and to share in the debaucheries and 
gaming of the Franks. In one of these carousals, he 
suffered the diadem to be snatched in sportive or con- 
temptuous familiarity from his head, and exchanged 
for the coarse woollen cap of some low reveller; and 
the contempt, as well as the aversion of his subjects, 
was not unjustly provoked against the unfeeling or 
thoughtless boy, who could thus basely, in the eyes 
of insolent barbarians, sully the lustre and dishonour 
the majesty of his imperial crown.* 

Through all these causes, Alexius soon found that 
he had become so odious to his countrymen as to 
render the continued presence of his Latin allies in- 
dispensable to the security of his throne; and he 
endeavoured, by the promise of further rewards, to 



* Nicetas, in Isaaciim et Alexin Angelas, c. 1-3. Villeliardouin, 
No. xcix.-ci. 

21 



322 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

induce them to postpone their departure, and the 
prosecution of their crusading vows, until the follow- 
ing spring. He found them little loth to accede to 
his terms. On the first restoration of Isaac, indeed, 
the Latin barons had given some signs of pursuing 
the original purpose of their confederacy, had sent a 
defiance to the Sultan of Egypt, and had deprecated 
the anger of the pope at their repeated disobedience 
by entreaties for pardon, and by assurances that 
thenceforth their arms should be devoted exclusively 
to the sacred service of Palestine. The Venetians 
also had condescended to solicit a reconciliation with 
the Holy See ; and Innocent was so well satisfied with 
the prospect of bringing the Greek Church under his 
dominion, and so rejoiced to recognise the slightest 
symptoms of penitence in those stubborn republicans, 
that he extended absolution to them, as well as to 
their more submissive baronial confederates. But, in 
truth, both the Doge and his noble allies were by this 
time almost equally ready to disregard the papal dis- 
pleasure and the objects of the Crusade for their per- 
sonal profit; and Alexius seems to have experienced 
little difficulty in purchasing their continued services 
until the spring, as soon as he had quieted their con- 
sciences by repeating the condition, that he would 
then accompany them to Egypt with the recruited 
forces of his empire.* 

VUa Innocc7it. III. p. 534:. Villehardouin, No. ci.-ciii. 



EXPEDITION AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE. OZO 

To occupy the interval, and enforce the recognition 
of his disputed authority over the imperial territories, 
the Marquis of Montferrat, with a hody of the con- 
federate chivalry, successfully conducted the young 
prince in an expedition through the Thracian pro- 
vinces; but, during this absence, the hatred of the 
people of the capital was fatally aggravated by the 
misconduct of the Latins. Though, for the pre- 
vention of feuds, a separate quarter had been assigned 
to the strangers in the suburb of Galata or Pera, some 
Flemings and Venetians, during a visit to the city, 
attacked a commercial colony of Mussulmans, which 
had long enjoyed the protection of the Byzantine em- 
perors. The infidels, though surprised, defended 
themselves bravely: the Greek inhabitants assisted 
them, while some Latin residents aided the aggres- 
sors ; and, during the conflict, the latter set fire to a 
building, from whence the flames spread with such 
frightful rapidity, that, before they could be extin- 
guished, a third part of the magnificent city was re- 
duced to ashes. During eight days, the conflagration 
raged over above a league in extent from the port to 
the Propontis: immense quantities of merchandise 
and other valuable property were destroyed, and 
thousands of families were reduced to beggary. The 
Latin chiefs expressed their vain sorrow for a calamity 
which, as produced by the unbridled license of their 
followers, it should rather have been their care to pre- 
vent; but the suflering and exasperated Greeks were 



324 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

little disposed to credit their sincerity. Moreover, as 
some of the Italian settlers in the capital had insti- 
gated or shared the outrage, the vengeance of the suf- 
ferers was specially directed against the ingratitude of 
these foreigners who had long been naturalized among 
them ; and to the number of fifteen thousand persons, 
the whole body were compelled to abandon their 
dwellings, and to consult their safety by flight to the 
suburban quarters of the crusaders.''' 

From this epoch, the national animosity of the 
Greeks and Latins mutually increased to a deadly 
height; and, when the young emperor returned to his 
capital, he found the rupture incurable, and his own 
position such, that he was scarcely permitted to 
choose between the party of his subjects and that of 
his allies. By the Greeks, he was more than ever 
abhorred as the tool of their oppressors ; by the Latin 
chiefs, without consideration for the difficulties which 
oppressed his government, his hesitation in fulfilling 
the pecuniary conditions of the alliance was resented 
with suspicion and menaces. Not deigning to admit 
the public distresses which the late conflagration had 
grievously aggravated, as any excuse for delay in the 
collection and payment of their promised reward, the 
confederate leaders suddenly adopted the most violent 
counsels ; and an embassy was sent, in the name of 



* Nicetas in Isaac, et Alex, p 272-274. Villeliardouin, No. 
cvii.-cvii. 



EXPEDITION AGAINST CONSTANTINOPLE. 325 

the Doge of Venice, and of the barons of the army, to 
defy the two emperors in their own palace. After 
fearlessly delivering their haughty message, the en- 
voys mounted their horses, and returned to the 
quarters of the confederates; and hostilities, to which 
the two emperors were the only reluctant parties, as 
they were also the first victims, immediately com- 
menced on both sides.* 

Such was the unhappy condition of the nation and 
the times, that the only man among the Greeks who 
had courage and ability to undertake the defence of 
his country, was placed in the odious light of a traitor 
and an usurper. Alexius Angelus Ducas, surnamed 
Mourzoufle, from his shaggy eyebrows, a prince allied 
by blood to the imperial house, had been the chief in- 
strument in urging the vacillating young emperor to 
resist the haughty demands of the Latins; and in the 
war of skirmishes which now ensued, his personal 
valour and energy were invidiously contrasted with 
the weakness or reluctance of his sovereign. The 
seditious populace of Constantinople demanded the 
deposition of Isaac and his son, whom they stig- 
matized as the secret friends of the invaders; and 
after the prudence of several members of the nobility 
had induced them to decline the proffered dignity of 
the purple, a young patrician, named Nicholas Cana- 
bus, was tempted by his vanity to accept the Byzan- 

* Yilleliardouin, No. cix.-cxii. Nicetas, uhi svprd. 



326 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

tine crown. But the valour of Ducas had meanwhile 
gained the suffrages of the Varangian guards; the 
imperial pu^Dpet of the hour was displaced without re- 
sistance; Isaac and his son were persuaded to seek 
safety in flight, and were betrayed into a dungeon, in 
which the former soon expired with grief and terror; 
and the more deserving patriot or successful conspi- 
rator was unanimously called to the throne, [a. d. 1204.] 
From the hour in which Ducas assumed the insignia of 
empire, a new impulse was given to the Byzantine 
counsels : the walls of the capital were guarded with 
active discipline; many sallies were at least boldly 
directed; two attempts, frustrated only by the intre- 
pidity and skill of the Venetian sailors, were made to 
burn the Latin fleet; and if it had been possible to 
nerve the hearts of the Greeks in the national cause, 
its ruin might yet have been averted by the spirit of 
their leader. But in every encounter before the walls 
and in the adjacent country, Ducas was deserted by 
the cowardice of his new subjects; he found it neces- 
sary to negotiate with the invaders; and when they 
insisted on the restoration of the deposed emperor, he 
attempted to remove that obstacle to an accommo- 
dation, since Isaac was already dead, by the murder 
of his remaining prisoner Alexius.* 

* Villehardouin, No. cxiii.-cxis. Vita Innocent. III. p. 534, 535 
Nicetas, in Isaac, ct Alex. c. 4, 5, in Mourzujlum, c. 1. 



SECOND SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 327 




Theodore Lascaris. 



SECTION IV. 



SECOND SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 



sHEN the intelligence of this event 
reached the camp of the crusaders, the 
causes of resentment which had sepa- 
rated them from the young ally and 
companion of their voyage, were forgotten in com- 




328 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

miseration and horror at his untimely and cruel fate. 
They passionately swore to revenge his death upon a 
perfidious usurper and nation ;''' and the crime of 
Ducas served only to exasperate the enmity, while it 
inflamed the ambition of these formidable assailants. 
Conceiving themselves now released from all obliga- 
tions of forbearance toward a race so inhuman and 
treacherous as the Greeks, and easily adopting the 
convenient doctrine that it was a religious duty to 
punish their murder of a prince by the conquest and 
dismemberment of his empire, the Doge and confede- 
rate barons proceeded to sign a treaty of partition by 
which, in the hardy confidence of valour, and un- 
daunted by the disparity of their force to the perilous 
magnitude of the enterprise, they anticipated the re- 
sult of their astonishing achievements. It was agreed 
that, after liquidating, out of the booty to be captured, 
the pecuniary claims of Venice for the expenses of the 
armament, the remainder should be equally shared 
between the troops of the crusaders and the republic; 
that the existence of the empire should be preserved, 
and one of the confederate barons raised to its throne, 
but with only a fourth of its present territories for the 
support of his title ; and that, of the remaining three- 



* Yet if Nicetas (p. 280) may be credited, in preference to the 
Latin authorities who do not notice such a transaction, the crusading 
barons, by the advice of the Doge of Venice, were still willing to 
have granted peace to the usurper for fifty thousand pounds of gold : 
but mutual distrust broke off the neffotiation. 



SECOND SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 329 

fourths, one moiety should be surrendered in full 
sovereignty to Venice, and the other divided into 
imperial fiefs among the nobles of the Crusade.'-' 

The winter had been consumed in desultory con- 
flicts or in necessary preparation; but, with the re- 
turn of spring, the confederates having completed the 
arrangement of their daring project, proceeded to put it 
into execution. To prevent a repetition of the failure 
in the last attack upon the walls from the separation 
of their forces, it was determined that the assault of 
the capital should be attempted from the port alone ; 
and the Venetian fleet being distributed into six 
divisions, to correspond with the former arrangement 
of the chivalry into as many battles, one body of 
knights embarked in the palanders of each squadron 
with their horses and followers. In this order the 
whole armament crossed the harbour, and assaulted 
the same line of defences, against which the Venetians 
had before successfully exerted their efforts. But, 
though the depth of water permitted the vessels to 
approach near enough to the walls for the combatants 
on the ramparts and on the drawbridges and rope- 
ladders, which were let down from the upper works 
of the galleys, to fight hand to hand; the insecure 
footing of the assailants on these frail and floating 
machines, and the firm vantage-ground and superior 

* Epistola Balduini, in Vita Innocent. III. p. 526. Danduli, 
Chronicon, (/« notis,) p. 326. 



330 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

numbers of the besieged, rendered the combat so 
unequal, that the former, after astonishing feats of 
valour, were finally repulsed at every point. In- 
structed but not intimidated by this failure, the 
Venetians now undertook to supply their allies with 
the means of approaching the walls in steadier array ; 
the large vessels were strongly lashed together in 
pairs, to increase their stability and impulsive force; 
and three days having been spent in preparation and 
refreshment, the assault was again given with resist- 
less vigour and happier fortune. 

From sunrise to noon, the slow advance of the heavy 
line of vessels was retarded by volleys of missiles 
which were showered from the walls; [April 12;] 
the recent success of the Greeks had animated their 
spirit into a courageous resistance; and the issue of 
the conflict still hung in dangerous suspense : when a 
strong breeze, suddenly springing up from the north, 
all at once drove the double galleys with propitious 
violence against the walls. The names of the two 
linked vessels — the Pilgrim and Paradise — having on 
board the martial Bishops of Soissons and Troyes, 
which first touched the walls, were repeated with loud 
shouts as an omen of divine aid; the panic-stricken 
Greeks fled from their posts; four towers, with a long 
line of rampart, were escaladed and carried ; and three 
gates being burst open, the knights led their horses on 
shore from the palanders, mounted, and swept through 
the streets of Constantinople in battle array. In the 



SECOND SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 331 

mazes of a vast capital, indeed, their cavalry might 
have been useless, their feeble numbers might have 
been lost and overpowered; in the hands of a brave 
people, every house might have been defended, every 
church and palace and massive building converted 
into an impregnable fortress. So conscious were the 
victors of their danger, that they immediately began 
to fortify the first quarters which they had seized; 
passed the night under arms ; and setting fire to the 
streets in their front, produced a new conflagration, 
which in a few hours consumed another portion of the 
city equal in extent, according to the confession of 
their chronicler, to any three towns in France. But 
these precautions were needless against an enemy 
whom neither patriotism nor despair, neither the ruin 
of their country and fortunes, nor the violence with 
which the licentious passions of a ferocious soldiery 
menaced their own lives and the honour of their 
women, could rouse to one generous or manly effort. 
The Emperor Ducas, finding it impossible to animate 
his craven subjects with any portion of his own spirit, 
abandoned them to their fate, and retired from the 
city with his family. After his flight, the brave 
efforts of two other illustrious Greeks, Theodore 
Ducas and Theodore Lascaris — the latter of whom 
was destined subsequently to re-establish and sustain 
the fortunes of his country — proved for the time 
equally ineffectual; a suppliant train bearing crosses 
and images sought the quarters, to implore the mercy 



332 



THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 




Desecration of the Churches. 

of the crusaders for the fallen capital; and when 
morning dawned, the Latin chiefs, who had antici- 
pated that the reduction of the whole city would still 
cost them at least the labour of a month, found them- 
selves masters of the Eastern empire.* 

But while they gladly accepted the submission, they 
were deaf to the abject prayers of the Greeks, Con- 
stantinople was abandoned to a general pillage, dur- 
ing which the miserable inhabitants witnessed and 
endured every extremity of horror. Yet even the 
brutal and licentious soldiery v/ere surpassed in 



* Villeharclouin, Xo. cxx.-cxxx. Epistola BaMuini in Vita In- 
nocent. III. p. 535, 536. Nicetas, in Murzuflv.m c. 2. 



SECOND SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 333 

cruelty by the Latin residents who had been re- 
cently expelled from the city, and chiefly by whose 
revengeful malice two thousand of the unresisting 
Greeks were wantonly murdered in cold blood. Insult 
and sacrilege were added to rapine and debauchery ; 
the churches and national worship of the Greeks were 
defiled and profaned; and by the followers of a cru- 
sading army w^as strangely enacted at Constantinople 
the same impious scene, which another European 
capital was to exhibit to modern times, of enthroning 
a painted strumpet in a Christian cathedral."-' The 
worst vices were freely perpetrated by the rabble of 
the camp and Latin suburbs; but attempts were made 
to control the privilege of rapine for the general bene- 
fit of the victors; on pain of excommunication and 
death, all individuals were commanded to bring their 
booty to appointed stations for a public division ; and 
though some incurred the penalty of disobedience, and 
many more successfully secreted their spoils, the 
quantities of treasure which were collected exceeded 
the most greedy or sanguine expectation. After 
satisfying the claims of the Venetians, the value of 
the share which fell to the French crusaders is esti- 
mated, by their chronicler, at four or five hundred 
thousand marks, besides ten thousand horses; and 

* This " Goddess of Keason" of tlie thirteenth century was seated 
on the throne to represent the oflB.ce and person of the patriarch, 
while drunken revellers in ribaldrous songs and dances mocked the 
chants and ceremonies of the Greek worship. Nicetas, p. 303. 



334 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

another eye-witness declares that, by the division of 
the booty, the poorest of the host were rendered 
wealthy .'"^ 

But the gain of the adventurers, however enormous, 
bore a small proportion to the destruction and waste 
of property by which their victory was attended. It 
would be vain to estimate the wealth of ages which 
had been consumed in three conflagrations, or spoiled 
in the wantonness of a sack. But every scholar and 
lover of the arts must deplore the irreparable loss of 
those relics of the literature and sculpture of classical 
antiquity, which perished in the fall of Constanti- 
nople. Her libraries, still containing many precious 
remains of the best ages of Greece and Rome, which 
have not been preserved to our times, were now 
abandoned to the flames by the ignorant indifference 
of the barbarian conquerors ; but their malevolence or 
cupidity was more actively exercised in the destruc- 
tion of those beauteous monuments of which Constan- 
tino had robbed the ancient seiit of empire to enrich 
his new capital. In the furious violence of conquest, 
or in mere wanton love of destruction, the statues of 
marble were mutilated or thrown down from their 
pedestals: but those of bronze were melted, with 
insensible and sordid avarice, to afford a base coin for 
the payment of the soldiery. This barbarous abuse 



* Villehardouin, No. cxxx.-cxxxv. Vita Innocent. III. p. 536-538. 
Nicetas, in Murzujlum, ad Jin. 



SECOND SIEGE OF CON ST ANTIXOTLE. 







Tower of St. Mark's, Venice. 

of the right of conquest was probably the work of the 
rude barons of France: for the more refined Vene- 
tians, with better taste, if not with less injustice, con- 
verted a portion of their spoil into a national trophy ; 
and removed to St. Mark's Place in their capital those 
four celebrated horses* of bronze which, at the distance 



* Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, 
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun ; 
But is not Doria's menace come to pass ? 
Are they not bridled ? 



336 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

of six centuries, still present the most striking memo- 
rial of the glory and ruin of the once mighty re- 
public. 

After the division of their booty, the leaders of the 
confederate host assembled to consummate the more 
imj)ortant work of partitioning an empire. For the 
preliminary business of nominating one of their 
number to fill the spoliated throne of the Csesars, six 
persons of each nation, French and Venetian, were 
appointed under one of the provisions of the existing 
treaty ; and this council now balanced the claims of 
the Marquis of Montferrat, hitherto the chosen leader 
of the Crusade, and of the Count of Flanders: for 
though the superior merits of the Doge to either were 
generously suggested by the French electors, his own 
countrymen, wdth the patriotic jealousy of republican 
freedom, declared the imperial dignity incompatible 
with the office of the first magistrate of their com- 
monwealth. The final choice of the council fell upon 
the Count of Flanders, determined, perhaps, by his 
descent from Charlemagne, his alliance by blood to 
the King of France, and the anticipated repugnance 
of the French barons to obey an Italian sovereign. 
As soon as this decision of the electors was an- 
nounced, Baldwin was raised upon a buckler, accord- 
i))g to the Byzantine custom, by his brother barons 
and knights, borne on their shoulders to the church 
of St. Sophia, invested with the purple, and exhibited 
to the Greeks as their new emperor. His rival, and 



SECOND SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 



537 




Ceremony of raking aii elected King on a BucJcler. 



now his vassal, the Marquis of Montferrat, was con- 
soled by the possession of Macedonia and great part of 
proper Greece, with the regal title; and the remain- 
ing barons shared, by lot or precedence of rank, the 
various provinces of the empire in Europe and Asia, 
which remained at their choice, after the stipulated 
appropriation of three-eighths of the whole to the Ve- 
netian republic. Besides that proj^ortion of the capi- 
tal itself, Venice thus obtained the sovereignty of 
Crete, of most of the islands in the Ionian and ^Egean 



66b THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

seas, and of a long chain of maritime ports on the 
continent from the capes of the Adriatic to the Bos- 
phorus. While the republic, in virtue of this par- 
tition, arrogated to her venerable Doge and his suc- 
cessors the proud and accurate title of lords of one- 
fourth and one-eighth of the empire of Romania, to the 
new sovereign of Constantinople had been reserved in 
immediate sovereignty only one-fourth of the Byzan- 
tine dominions; and on all sides the narrow and 
inadequate limits of his throne were surrounded by 
vassals, who only nominally acknowledged, and by 
enemies who wholly denied the legality of his reign.* 
The eagerness of the Latin adventurers to occupy 
their several allotments of the territorial spoil, dis- 
covered the total insufficiency of their divided 
strength to secure the work of conquest, which they 
had so daringly achieved. The dispersion of the 
French barons, each attended by no more than a few 
score of lances, over the vast provinces of the empire, 
betrayed to the subjugated nation the weakness of 
their conquerors, while the impolitic contempt by 
which the Greeks of all ranks found themselves ex- 
cluded from employments and honours in the Latin 
court, increased their impatience to escape from a 
yoke, which they still wanted courage or concert to 
break. By degrees, therefore, from the capital and 



* Villehardouin, No. cxxxvi.-cxi. Danduli Chron. lib. x. c. 3. 
Du Cange, Hist, de Constantinople sous les Empereurs Frangais, lib. 1. 



SECOND SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 339 

its neighbouring provinces on the European shores, 
the noblest born and the bravest of the Greeks with- 
drew into less accessible quarters of the dismembered 
empire to range themselves under the standards of 
native leaders. In Europe, for a moment after the 
fall of Constantinople, the imperial title was still arro- 
gated by the two fugitive usurpers, the elder Alexius 
Angelus and Ducas Mourzoufie; and between them 
an apparent reconciliation was effected. During his 
short reign, Ducas had endeavoured to strengthen his 
pretensions to the imperial dignity by seizing the 
hand of a daughter of Alexius ; and being now driven 
out of Adrianople on the advance of the Latins, he 
obtained, through the tender of allegiance to his 
father-in-law, a promise of such protection as his camp 
could afford. But he had no sooner placed himself in 
the power of Alexius, than that tyrant, even more 
perfidious than impotent, caused him to be deprived 
of his eyes and thrust from the camp. In this sight- 
less and horrid condition, as he was endeavouring to 
escape across the Hellespont into Asia, Mourzoufie was 
arrested by the Latins; brought to trial for his own 
worst crime, the murder of young Alexius ; and con- 
demned to be cast, alive and headlong, from the lofty 
summit of the Theodosian pillar at Constantinople 
upon the marble pavement beneath.* The execution 
of this dreadful sentence on him was soon followed by 

* Villebardouin, No. clxi.-clxv. Nicetas, in Balduin, p. 393. 



340 THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

the captivity of his betrayer Alexius, who was sur- 
prised by Boniface of Montferrat, and transported to 
an Italian dungeon. By the fate of these two usurp- 
ers, the principal support of the national cause of the 
Greeks devolved upon a young hero, who might main- 
tain, in right of his wife, the hereditary claims, while 
he spurned the base qualities of the Angeli ; and in 
whom the valour of Ducas was unsullied by the guilt 
of treason and murder. This was Theodore Lascaris, 
who had also married a daughter of Alexius Angelus; 
and whose gallant devotion to his country had already 
been signalized in the two sieges of Constantinople. 
Retiring, after the fall of the capital, across the Bos- 
phorus into the recesses of Bithynia, and being joined 
by the most generous and congenial spirits of his 
nation, he there organized a resistance against the 
Latin adventurers, which not only prevented them 
from ever gaining a secure establishment in the 
Asiatic provinces of the empire, but prepared their 
expulsion from their European conquests. But th6 
fate both of the Latin and Greek dynasties, which for 
sixty years were to dispute the sceptre of the Eastern 
empire, will reclaim our attention hereafter; and the 
connection of the History of the Crusades with the 
revolutions of Constantinople closes at the period 
before us. 

In the division and enjoyment of a conquered 
empire, the confederate barons who had embraced the 
service of the Cross, now seemed as completely to have 



SECOND SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 341 

forgotten the original object of their expedition, as if 
it had never been undertaken for the deliverance of 
the Holy Sepulchre ; and the vain trophies of a vic- 
tory, not over Paynim but Christian enemies — the 
gates and chain of the harbour of Constantinople — 
sent by the new emperor of the East to Palestine/^' 
were the only fruits of the Fourth Crusade which 
ever reached the Syrian shores. 

* Nicetas, in Balduin, p. 383. 




Gethsemane. 



342 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




Baldwin I., Emjyeror of the East. 



CHAPTER V, 



%\t fast |flur CrMsabts. 



SECTION I.— HISTORY OF THE LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. 



■*«5;^ ^ife 






m 



ROM the first hour of its establish- 
me.u^, the Latin Empire of the 
jiSi / East was foredoomed to a hope- 
'^^*''"Jees. condition of weakness and 
L^- decay. The appropriation of 
F^^M tfiree-eighths of the conquered 
(PMW provinces to the Venetian repub- 
lic; the division of an equal 



LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. 343 

portion among feudal chieftains, who acknowledged 
only a nominal supremacy in the imperial possessor 
of the remaining fourth ; the escape of the bravest of 
the Greeks into Epirus and Asia, and the common 
and deep detestation with which the whole race of 
their subjugated countrymen regarded the govern- 
ment of the Western barbarians and the supremacy 
of a heretical church, all conspired to promote the 
rapid dissolution of that splendid but unreal fabric of 
conquest, which a few thousand adventurers had 
suddenly founded amid the ruins of the Byzantine 
throne. 

The mutual jealousies and dissensions of the con- 
querors would alone have been fatal to the stability of 
their dominion; and the contempt in which they held 
the pusillanimous character of the Greeks, blinded 
them to the imprudence of outraging the national feel- 
ings of an acute and subtle people, who eagerly 
watched every symptom of their weakness and dis- 
union, and silently awaited the season of reaction and 
revenge. 

So insensible were the Latins to the insecurity 
and danger of their position, that, only a few 
months after the conquest of Constantinople, as if no 
better occupation could be found against the common 
enem}^, their two principal potentates, the emperor 
Baldwin and Boniface of Montferrat, the new king of 
Macedonia, engaged in an open civil war, which was 
terminated with difficulty by the intervention of the 



344 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

Doge of Venice, and of the sovereign peers of the dis- 
membered empire.* 

This quarrel was scarcely composed when the 
titular reign of Baldwin was suddenly disturbed by a 
more formidable opponent, [a. d. 1204,] whose hos- 
tility was provoked by the Latin pride, and assisted 
by Greek disaffection. This was Calo Johannes, or 
Joannice, king of Bulgaria, the ancient enemy of the 
Greek empire, who, on its subversion, had welcomed 
the Latins as natural allies, and invited their friend- 
ship by a congratulatory embassy. But Baldwin, 
who pretended to have succeeded to all the rights of 
the deposed dynasty, repulsed the Bulgarian envoys 
with disdain ; treated their master as a revolted rebel 
against the Byzantine throne; and instead of accept- 
ing his alliance, demanded his allegiance. Joannice 
smothered this insult only until his emissaries had 
prepared the Greek provincials of Thrace to become 
the ready instruments of his vengeance. An exten- 
sive conspiracy was quickly and secretly organized; 
and the signal for its explosion was the departure 
from Constantinople of Henry, the brother of Baldwin, 
with the flower of the Latin chivalry, to attempt the 
reduction of the Asiatic provinces. Throughout 
Thrace, the Greek population rose simultaneously and 

* Geoffroy de Villehardouin, Histoire dc la Prise dc Constanti- 
nople, Ed. Du Cange, fol. Paris, 1657. Paragraphs No. cxl.-clx. 
Du Cange, Histoire de Constant inoi)lc sous les Empercurs Frangois, 
(_in codem loco,} lib. i. 



LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. 345 

suddenlj' against their oppressors; the Latins in the open 
country, unarmed and surprised, were everywhere mer- 
cilessly slaughtered ; [A. d. 1205 ;] the feeble garrisons 
of the towns, for the most part, were either overpow- 
ered by the first shock of the revolt and massacred, or 
escaped in dismay by a gathering retreat upon the 
capital; and the loss of Adrianople, the second city 
of the empire, where the Venetians had established 
their chief post, and whence their forces were driven 
in disorder by the insurgent populace, completed the 
sum of disaster. To aggravate its effects, Joannice 
himself, at the head of his Bulgarians, and of a yet 
more fierce and savage horde of Comans,* or Turco- 
man auxiliaries, poured into Thrace, and discovered 

* In the Memoirs of Joinville (Johnes's Translation, p. 204) is a 
curious passage illustrative of a custom of this wild horde of the 
Comans. Louis IX. of France was joined in Palestine by " a most 
noble knight" of Constantinople, who informed the king that, when 
the Comans had once concluded an alliance with the Latins, their 
chief had insisted on the contracting parties "being blooded, and 
drinking alternately of each other's blood in sign of brotherhood." 
Joinville adds that, when this Byzantine knight and his companions 
took service with the French, they required the like pledge of him- 
self and his countrymen ; " and our blood being mixed with wine, 
was drunk by each party as constituting us all brothers of the same 
blood." The mention of this barbarous rite, thus borrowed by the 
Latins from the pagan Comans, furnishes the indefatigable Du 
Cange with an occasion to discuss the whole subject of brotherly 
adoption in arms. Diss. xsi. The Comans were a Tartar, or Tur- 
coman horde, who encamped in the 12th and 13th centuries on the 
verge of Moldavia. They were mostly pagans, but some were Mo- 
hammedans, and the whole tribe was converted to Christianity in 1370 
by Louis, King of Hungary. 



346 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

to the Latins the extent of the combination against 
them. 

At this perilous juncture, Baldwin and his gallant 
compeers, who had rallied the broken remains of their 
chivalry round the capital, evinced the same high and 
dauntless spirit, and the same untempered disdain of 
all prudential considerations, which had already 
achieved and endangered the possession of an empire. 
Instead of awaiting the arrival of Henry of Flanders 
and his more numerous bands, who had been recalled 
from the Asiatic war on the first alarm, the emperor 
resolved to take the field at the head of his scanty 
array, and to advance for the immediate recovery of 
Adrianople from the insurgents. The march was 
accomplished, and that city had already been in- 
vested, when the Latin chivalry was enveloped in a 
plain by a cloud of Bulgarian and Turcoman horse, 
who, according to their usual mode of combat, fled 
before every charge ; lured their enemies into a pre- 
cipitate and disorderly pursuit ; and when the heavily 
armed French cavaliers had utterly exhausted their 
own strength and that of their steeds, turned sud- 
denly upon them, surrounded, and cut them to pieces. 
The Count of Blois, whose rash contempt of a salutary 
caution had involved the Latin army in their destruc- 
tion, paid the penalty of his presumption, and was 
slain on the spot; the emperor Baldwin, whose im- 
petuosity had been carried away by the example, fell 
alive into the hands of a cruel enemy ; and the rem- 



LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. 347 

iiant of the Latin host was saved from destruction 
only by the presence of mind, the skill, and the 
patient courage of the aged Doge of Venice and of the 
Marshal Villehardouin, the historian of the war/-' 

While the venerable Dandolo assumed the general 
direction of a retreat, his noble compeer rallied a rear- 
guard, and at its head firmly sustained the furious 
assaults of the pursuers ; and in such order was safely 
accomplished an arduous march of three days, from 
the walls of Adrianople to the shores of the Helles- 
pont. There, the exhausted forces of the Latins were 
met by the troops under Henry of Flanders, who had 
landed from the Asiatic coast; whose junction re- 
stored the balance of strength; and whose arrival, if 
it had been awaited before the late expedition, might 
have averted its disastrous issue. Li the first igno- 
rance of the Latins of the fate of their captive em- 
peror, the regency of his dominions was intrusted to 
his brother Henry ; but, after the lapse of a year, the 
king of Bulgaria, who had formerly obtained the 
papal friendship and patronage by professing his con- 
version to the Latin church, replied to the solicita- 
tions of Innocent IH. for the release of Baldwin, that 
his imperial prisoner had expired in his dungeon. 
The manner of his death was never ascertained ; but 
the fact (although twenty years later it was strongly 

* Villehardouin, No. clxv.-cxciii. Nicetas Aeominati Choniata?, 
Historia, (^in Script. Bi/zant.^, p. 383-416. Du Cange, Hist. Con- 
stant, lib. i. ad Jineni. 



348 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

brought into doubt) was firmly believed by bis East- 
ern subjects; and after an affectionate delay, until 
all hope of his existence had been lost, his brother 
Henry consented to assume the imperial title/'' 

In the brief and calamitous annals of the Latin 
Empire of the East, the reign of the virtuous and pru- 
dent Henry presents the sole interval of comparative 
prosperity. By the death of his original compeers in 
the Fourth Crusade, he was gradually left to sustain 
with his single energy the arduous duties of defending 
the Latin States against the hostility, both of the Bul- 
garians in Europe, and of the Greek refugees of Asia. 
The King of Macedonia, after a zealous and gallant 
co-operation against the common enemy, which was 
cemented by a family alliance with the emperor, was 
slain in an unfortunate skirmish by the Bulgarian 
troops; the valiant marshal and faithful historian, 
Geoffroy of Villehardouin did not long survive him ; 
and the decease of both had been preceded by that of 



* Villehardouin, Nicetas, Du Cange, ubi supra ad fin. Gesta 
Innocentii III. (in Muratori, Script. Her. Ital. vol. iii.) c. 109. The 
balance of evidence is certainly on the whole against the identity 
with the captive emperor, of the claimant who appeared in Flanders 
about twenty years afterward, but his story was not improbable, and 
scarcely justifies the confidence with which Gibbon (ch. Ixi. notes 29, 
30) has pronounced it an imposture, chiefly, perhaps, for the purpose 
of ridiculing the " fables which were believed by the monks of St. 
Alban's." lie was hanged as an impostor in the great square of 
Lisle, by order of Jane, Countess of Flanders, the daughter of the 
lost Baldwin. 



LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. 349 

the brave old Doge * But, though deprived of these 
pillars of the Latin glory and fortune, Henry, by his 
courage and wisdom, nobly upheld and repaired the 
shattered edifice of dominion. By rescinding the im- 
politic exclusion of his Greek subjects from the public 
service, he conciliated their affections ; and his judi- 
cious measures were assisted by the treacherous 
cruelty and tyranny with which the Bulgarian king 
repaid the Byzantine provincials for their seasonable 
revolt and alliance. That barbarian had already 
commenced a project for the depopulation of Thrace, 
and for the forcible withdrawal of the inhabitants 
beyond the Danube, when his measures were arrested 
by the approach of Henry; who, moved by the en- 
treaties of the Greeks, hastened to the deliverance of 
the repentant rebels at the head of only a few hun- 
dred knights and their attendants. The inhabitants, 
on his approach, welcomed him with open arms ; Bul- 
garian hosts of immense numerical superiority were 
repeatedly defeated by the skill of Henry and the 
well-directed valour of the Latin chivalry ; and Joan- 
nice was ignominiously expelled from the Thracian 

* Dandolo was buried in the Cturcli of St. Sophia at Constanti- 
nople, and his mausoleum existed till the destruction of the Greek 
empire; but it was demolished when that church was converted into 
a Turkish mosque. A Venetian painter, who worked for several 
years at the court of Mohammed II., obtained from the Sultan, on 
his return to his own country, the cuirass, the helmet, the spurs, and 
the cloak of the Doge, which he presented to the family of that illus- 
trious man. Michaud, ii. 172. 



350 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

provinces. The murder of the Bulgarian tyrant by 
his own subjects shortly afterward relieved the 
Latin empire from his hostility; and his successor 
gladly accepted an honourable peace from his con- 
queror. 

The moderation of Henry induced him to seize 
the first opportunity of concluding with the Greek 
sovereigns of Nice and Epirus similar pacifications; 
[a. D. 1216 ;] which defined the limits of their respect- 
ive states, and enabled him to close in tranquil glory 
a reign of ten years, which was too short for the hap- 
piness of his subjects.''' 

The mention of the Greek emj^ire of Nice may 
momentarily divert our attention to the Asiatic shores 
of the Bosphorus. [a. d. 1204.] When Theodore 
Lascaris withdrew from servitude at the capture of 
Constantinople, to sustain the cause of personal and 
national freedom in the fastnesses of Bithynia, his 
authority was acknowledged by only three cities and 
two thousand armed followers; but his service was 
soon embraced by all his fugitive countrymen from 
the capital, who shared his disdain of a foreign yoke ; 
and his martial efforts were favoured by the calami- 
ties of the Bulgarian war, which compelled the Latins 
to withdraw their forces from the prosecution of their 
Asiatic conquests. On the twofold claim of his own 



* Villehardouin, No. cxcii. ad fin. Gesta Innocent. III. c. 106, 
107. Du Cange, Hist. Constant, lib. ii. c. 1-22. 



LATIN EMPIKE OF THE EAST. 351 

merit, and of his union with the daughter of Alexius 
Angelus, the right of Lascaris to the imperial dignity 
was universally acknowledged by his adherents ; and 
establishing the seat of his government at Nice, he 
made that city the capital of a state, which he quickly 
extended by his arms from the Hellespont to the 
Meander. His reign of eighteen years was termi- 
nated by death in the meridian of his age ; but his 
place was filled by a noble Greek of congenial virtue, 
John Ducas Vataces, who had married his daughter, 
and succeeded to his throne; [a. d. 1222 ;] and wdiose 
glorious career of thirty-three years was not more dis- 
tinguished by his success in arms, than by the virtues 
of his domestic administration.* 

"While the native dominion of the Greeks was re- 
viving under these two heroes, the Latin empire had 
become a prey, after the death of Henry, to all the 
disorders of a feeble government. By the decease of 
the last of the two Flemish princes who had worn the 
crown of Constantinople, the male line of their house 
was extinct : the daughter of Baldwin had succeeded 
to the possession of his European state ; Henry had 
left no issue, and the feudatories of the Byzantine 
state offered his throne to Peter de Courtenay, [a. d. 
1217,] a French baron who had married his sister, 
and whose regal pedigree has been illustrated by a 



* Gibbon, ch. Ixii., whom, for the Annals of the Greek Empire of 
Nice, we shall be contented to abridge. 



352 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

great historian.* Peter accepted tlie tempting but 
fatal honour, incautiously traversed the dangerous 
passes of Greece with a train of French knights, and, 
being entrapped into a perfidious truce with the 
despot of Epirus, the second of a race of Coranenian 
princes who had established an obscure independence 
on the ruins of the Greek empire, was thrown into a 
dungeon, in which he ended his life. [A. d. 1219.] 
Meanwhile the wife of Courtenay, lolanta, the new 
Latin Empress of the East, had reached Constanti- 
nople by sea; and during the short residue of her 
life, the government was administered in her name as 
regent for her captive or deceased lord.f 

On her death, and the refusal of her eldest son to 
abandon his French fief, Robert, his next brother, 
was summoned to ascend the Eastern throne, [a. d. 
1221,] and his arrival at Constantinople was followed 
by his coronation. The chivalrous qualities of the 
House of Courtenay, which had been signalized in 
Europe and in Palestine, were ill sustained by Robert. 
He proved himself at once pusillanimous, indolent, 
and licentious ; and, during his reign of seven years, 
the Latin empire, shaken on either side by the rude 
assaults of the Greeks of Nice and Epirus, rocked to 
its foundations. So corrupt was the spirit of the 



* Gibbon, xi. 287. The English branch of this ancient family is 
represented bj the Courtenays, Earls of Devon. 
I Du Cange, Ilist. Constant, lib. ii. c. 22, ad fin. 



LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. OOO 

French adventurers who sought employment in the 
East, that the Greek Emperor Vataces found no diffi- 
culty in enlisting whole bodies of them into his 
service against their countrymen. With such aid, 
his arras were everywhere successful ; the fleets 
which he equipped commanded the seas, and reduced 
several of the islands on the coast of Asia Minor; 
and, in a disastrous attempt to check his victorious 
career, most of the hardy veterans of the Fourth Cru- 
sade, who had survived the storms of the Bulgarian 
and Grecian wars, were numbered with the slain. A 
disgraceful feud in the Byzantine palace finally drove 
Robert from a throne which he wanted courage to 
defend against either foreign or domestic enemies. 
To revenge his seduction of the affianced bride of a 
Burgundian gentleman, the infuriated lover burst 
with a band of his friends into the imperial retreat, 
barbarously mutilated the beauty of his fair mistress, 
cast the mother, who had pandered to her falsehood, 
into the Hellespont, and openly braved the power of 
her paramour. When Robert demanded the assist- 
ance of his barons to punish this unpardonable out- 
rage upon the laws of humanity and the majesty of 
the purple, they justified the act, and made common 
cause with the criminal; and the craven prince, too 
impotent to enforce retribution for the cruel offence 
and affront which he had provoked, abandoned his 
throne, and appealed to the judgment of the Papal 
Court. [A. D. 1228.] But the pope was unwilling to 

23 



t54 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




Baldicin IT. 



commit his authority to the hazard of so profitless a 
quarrel; and the imperial exile was hurried by grief 
or pride to a premature grave/^ 

As Robert died without issue, the succession to his 
crown devolved upon his younger brother, Baldwin II., 
who was born at Constantinople shortly after the 
arrival of the Empress lolanta and the capture of her 
husband, and who was still a minor. But, as the 



* Du Cange, Hist. Constant, lib. iii. c. 1-12. 



LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. 355 

necessities of the state demanded a defender of ma- 
turer years, the barons of the empire offered a share of 
the imperial dignity to a valiant nobleman of Cham- 
pagne, John de Brienne, who had already, as we shall 
hereafter observe, been raised by his merit to the 
titular crown of Jerusalem, and had resigned that 
visionar}' diadem, with the hand of his eldest 
daughter, to Frederic II., EmjDcror of the West. Al- 
though this regal adventurer was already far ad- 
vanced in life, he accepted the proj)Osal of the Byzan- 
tine barons that he should ascend the imperial throne 
of Constantinople, upon condition of marrying his 
second daughter to his young colleague and destined 
successor, Baldwin II. During nine years, the aged 
hero nobly sustained the arduous duties of his station 
against the increasing resources and energies of the 
empire of Nice; but Vataces had now permanently 
re-established the Greek standard in Europe, and had 
recovered the greater portion of the ancient possessions 
of his nation in Thrace; the Latin territories were 
gradually circumscribed within the environs of the 
capital; the alliance of the Greek emperor with the 
King of Bulgaria threatened total ruin to the falling 
state ; and the last exploit of John de Brienne was 
the repulse of their combined army and navy of one 
hundred thousand men and three hundred galleys 
from the walls of Constantinople. ''^ [A. d. 1237.] 

* Du Cange, Hist. Constant, lib. iii. c. 13, ad fin. 



356 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

The strength of the capital and the prowess of John 
de Brienne had deferred for twenty-four years the 
total extinction of the Latin empire ; but the sceptre 
of all its territories was already held by the Greek 
conqueror. During his active and glorious career, 
Vataces had compelled the Comnenian sovereign of 
Epirus to resign the imperial title; and, reuniting 
Western Greece to the Eastern Provinces, he had 
consolidated his dominion over the whole expanse of 
country, from the Euxine to the Adriatic, and from 
the Danube to the Mediterranean. In a brief reign 
of only four years, his son and successor, Theodore 
Lascaris II., carried his victorious arms into the re- 
cesses of Bulgaria, [a. d. 1255,] and reduced that wild 
kingdom within its natural limits, and into its ancient 
submission to the Eastern Empire. The infancy of 
his son John made way for the rise of another hero 
of noble Greek family, Michael Palaeologus. [a. d. 
1259.] On the death of the second Theodore Lasca- 
ris, the guardianship of the infant emperor was 
wrested by a conspiracy from the hands of an un- 
popular favourite of the last reign, and obtained by 
Palceologus, whose martial reputation and post of con- 
stable of the French mercenaries gave him the com- 
mand, and had secured him the affections, of the im- 
perial troops. The new regent soon aspired to a 
higher dignity, to which his pretensions were founded 
not only on his personal merit, but on the superior 
right of hereditary descent over the reigning dynasty ; 



LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. 357 

since his mother was a daughter of the last Alexius, 
and an elder sister of the princess whom Theodore 
Lascaris had espoused. In the usual progress of 
such usurpation as the Eastern Empire had often 
witnessed, Palasologus was first declared the guardian, 
next the colleague, of his young sovereign; and, 
finally, he was crowned as sole emperor, and John 
Lascaris was condemned to an empty title of honour 
and a harmless obscurity. The personal claims and 
the public services of Palseologus might extenuate his 
conduct in thus seizing the sceptre; but the guilt of 
his usurpation was subsequently deepened by an act 
of unpardonable cruelty toward his unfortunate pupil; 
and in order that Lascaris might be for ever incapaci- 
tated from reigning, he was deprived of his eyesight 
by command of his jealous oppressor.* 

It was in the second year of the reign of the 
vigorous usurper, that the success of a desultory and 
almost an accidental enterprise terminated the feeble 
existence of the Latin Empire of the East. Since the 
death of John de Brienne, his son-in-law and colleague 
Baldwin 11. , upon whom the sole sovereignty de- 
volved, had proved himself utterly incapable of de- 
fending his throne; and had spent a lesser portion of 
his nominal reign of twenty-five years in the Eastern 
capital, than in traversing Western Europe with vain 
supplications for pecuniary and military aid, and in 

* Gibbon, ubi su^rd, ch. Ixii. 



358 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

exposing to public scorn his necessities and his weak- 
ness.* As the catastrophe of his inglorious fortunes 
approached, he slumbered in his palace, neither con- 
scious of the imminence of his danger, nor prepared 
for one generous effort of despair. The repulse of an 
attack by Palaeologus in person upon the suburbs of 
Constantinople, in the preceding year, might indeed 
have awakened him to the designs of that active and 
ambitious enemy. But such was the blind security 
of his government, that the squadron of galleys which 
the Venetians maintained in their Byzantine colony was 
suffered to carry away the flower of the French chivalry 
on a rash maritime expedition into the Euxine, at the 
very juncture when a body of the Greek troops was 
hovering about the gates of the capital. The com- 
mander of this hostile force was Alexius Strategopulus, 
the favourite lieutenant of the Emperor Michael, upon 
whom that prince had bestowed the title of Cajsar, and 
who now amply justified the confidence of his sove- 
reign. By his knowledge of the weakness of the 
Latin garrison, and of the disposition of the inhabi- 

* His two mendicant visits to England are noticed by the Monk 
of St. Alban's, p. 396, 637. In the first, he was first repelled with 
insult for presuming to land without permission, and afterward, on 
explanation, received and dismissed by Henry III. with a charitable 
collection of some seven hundred marks. In the second, he is con- 
temptuously numbered by our uncourtly monk as pauper, profugus, 
inglorious, &c. (a beggar, a vagabond, and a craven,) among the 
herd of princely beggars who were attracted to England, by the weak 
partiality of Henry III. for foreigner^ to prey upon his liberality. 



LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. 359 

tants, he was encouraged to attempt the surprise of 
Constantinople. He was assisted by the concert or 
the favour of the native Greek popuhation; by the 
hatred which the Genoese settlers bore to their 
Venetian rivals; by the cowardice of Baldwin; and 
by the general terror of the Latins. His troops were 
secretly admitted into the heart of the city, before 
their presence was discovered; at the first alarm 
Baldwin, escaping from his palace, sought safety on 
board the returning squadron from the Euxine, which 
arrived only in time to protect his flight to Italy ; and 
the Greeks of Constantinople joyfully hailed the de- 
liverance of their capital from a subjection of fift}'- 
seven years to the Latin yoke.''' [a. d. 1261.] 

The Emperor Michael Paloeologiis hastened to 
make his triumphant entry into the ancient and re- 
covered seat of the empire of his nation; and the 
remainder of his reign was laboriously occupied in 
securing his dominion against the vengeance or am- 
bition of the Latin Powers. From his fugitive rival 
Baldwin, in person, he had, indeed, little to dread ; 
and that craven prince closed his worthless life in an 
indigent exile. But his empty offers had meanwhile 
seduced the cupidity of Charles of Anjou, king of the 
Sicilies, to bestow a daughter upon his son Philip as 
the heir to the titular diadem of the East, and to un- 
dertake the reconquest and partition of the Greek 

*Du Cange, Hist Constant, lib. iv. v. ad c. 33. 



360 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

Empire. The mingled prudence and good fortune of 
Palaeologus defeated this design. His measures to 
conciliate the papac}^ by an acknowledgment of its 
spiritual supremacy, and a union of the Greek and 
Latin churches, belong to ecclesiastical history, as 
does also his success in averting a formidable invasion 
of his dominions by the French chivalry under 
Charles of Anjou, through the subsidies with which 
he supported the revolt of Sicily against that prince. 
The domestic reign of Palosologus was disturbed by a 
cruel persecution of his reluctant subjects, to enforce 
their submission to the pa|)al authority ; which, as his 
own insincerity in that cause w^as notorious, rendered 
his hypocritical policy the more atrocious, [a. d. 1282.] 
On his death, after a memorable reign of twenty-three 
years, of which the last nine had been shared by his 
son Andronicus, the dissolution of the hollow union of 
the two churches was indignantly demanded by the 
unanimous voice of the Greek clergy and people, and 
proclaimed by the willing or constrained assent of the 
surviving emperor. Of that prince, the long and 
inglorious reign, succeeding to a period of compara- 
tive vigour, may be said to open a new period of de- 
cline in the Byzantine annals, which will hereafter 
lead us to survey the last agony and fall of the Greek 
Empire.'-' 

* Du Cange, Hist. Const, lib. v. c. 34 ; vi. ad c. 13. Gibbon, ch. Isii. 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 



561 




SECTION n. 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 




MEANWHILE, having pursued 
to its catastrophe that great 
and singuLir episode in the 
history of the Crusades which 
was produced by the diver- 
sion of the Latin arms to the 
siege of Constantinople, we 
may here with propriety re- 
sume our general narrative 
of the progress of those Chris- 
tian efforts for the recovery 
of the Holy Sepulchre, which 
had been interrupted by the 



362 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

conquest of the Byzantine Empire. [A. d. 1204.] 
While the cupidity and ambition of the leaders of the 
Fourth Crusade seduced them to employ in that enter- 
prise the forces which Pope Innocent III. had designed 
for the relief of Palestine, the state of the Moham- 
medan Empire justified his reproach, that their dis- 
obedience had ruined the fairest occasion of re-esta- 
blishing the Christian fortunes in that country. By 
continued dissensions among the princes of the house 
of Saladin and the emirs who struggled for inde- 
pendence, the Mussulman power in Syria was re- 
duced to its lowest ebb ; and a dreadful famine and 
consequent pestilence in Egypt would effectually have 
paralyzed all opposition from that dangerous quarter 
to the success of the crusading arras. The hopes ex- 
cited for the Christian cause by the division and 
weakness of its enemies, were completely lost in the 
diversion of the Fourth Crusade against the Eastern 
Empire; and a truce for six years with Saphadin was 
the only advantage derived by the Latins on the 
Syrian coast from the distresses and alarm of the infi- 
dels. During this interval of repose, the titular crown 
of Jerusalem devolved, by the death of Almeric and 
his queen Isabella, upon Mary, her daughter by a 
prior marriage with Conrad of Tyre; and the clergy 
and barons of Palestine delegating to Philippe-Auguste 
of France the choice of a husband for the young heir- 
ess, that monarch named John, son of the Count de 
Brienne, as an accomplished and distinguished knight 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 363 

who was worthy of sharing, and capable of defendmg, 
her throne, [a. d. 1210.] Havmg accepted the 
proffered honour, John de Brienne arrived in Pales- 
tine, and received the hand of Mary with the royal 
title.* 

Soon after this event, on the expiration of the truce 
with Saphadin, the peace of Palestine was broken, less 
by the ambition of the Mussulman prince, than by a 
rash refusal to renew the treaty with him, v/liich had 
apparently been dictated in the Christian councils by 
the anticipation of powerful aid from France. But 
the new King of Jerusalem brought with him from 
Europe only a slender train of three hundred knights ; 
though his personal prowess in the fields of Palestine 
sustained his previous reputation, his most strenuous 
efforts to withstand the progress of the infidels were 
inefiectual; and he was reduced to address to Pope 
Innocent III. a pressing solicitation for succour, as the 
only means of saving from destruction the poor re- 
mains of the Latin kingdom. Although Innocent 
had already engaged in an object of nearer and deeper 
interest to the papal supremacy — the extirpation of 
the alleged heresy of the Albigenses — he was not un- 
moved by the danger of the Christian cause in Pales- 
tine; and he immediately and earnestly answered the 
appeal of John de Brienne by proclaiming throughout 



* Abulfeda, lib. iv. p. 182-194. Confut. Will Tyr. (in Martenne, 
Vet. Scrip. Coll. vol. v.) p. 646-668. 



364 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




William Longcspee, Earl ''•f Sali.slurij. 



Europe a new Crusade to the East. He not only de- 
spatched a circular letter to all the princes of Chris- 
tendom, in which they were urged, by the usual 
arguments, to embark in the sacred enterprise, but he 
instructed his legates and the clergy in every country 
of the "West to add their spiritual exhortations to the 
laity in the same cause. To give the greater unity 
and solemnity to the design, a general council of the 
church — the fourth of Lateran — was at the same 
time convened;* and by that assembly, in which 



* Contm. Will. Tyr. p. G68-680. Matthew Paris, (Ed. Watts, 
1684,) p. 228, 229. Labbe, Concilia, vol. ii. p. 119-233. 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 365 

all the principal monarclis of Christendom were re- 
presented by their envoys, the design of arming 
Europe anew against the Eastern infidels was zealously 
adopted. 

The Fifth Crusade, the result of this resolution, 
was divided in the sequel into three maritime expe- 
ditions : [a. d. 1216 ;] the first consisting principally 
of Hungarians under their king, Andrew; the second 
composed of Germans, Italians, French, and English 
nobles and their followers; and the third led by the 
Emperor Frederic II. in person. Of each of these 
enterprises, none of which were attended with many 
novel or interesting features, the events may be briefly 
distinguished and dismissed. Though the King of 
Hungary was attended by the flower of a nation 
which, before its conversion to Christianity, had been 
the scourge and terror of Western Europe, the arms 
of that monarch, even aided by the junction of nume- 
rous German crusaders under the Dukes of Austria 
and Bavaria, performed nothing worthy of notice: 
and after a single campaign in Palestine, in which 
the MussulmaA territories were ineflectually ravaged, 
the fickle Andrew deserted the cause, and returned 
with his forces to Europe. His defection did not 
prevent the Duke of Austria, with the German cru- 
saders, from remaining, in concert with the King 
of Jerusalem, his barons, and the knights of the 
three religious orders, for the defence of Palestine; 
and, in the following year, the constancy of these 



3G6 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

faithful champions of the Cross was rewarded by 
the arrival of numerous reinforcements from Ger- 
many.* 

This accession of strength gave a new energy and 
direction to the Christian councils; and it was re- 
solved to change the scene of warfare from the narrow 
limits of the Syrian shore to the coast of Egypt. 
Several motives impelled the crusaders to this reso- 
lution; the wealth of the latter country, which 
tempted their greediness of spoil; the dispiriting im- 
pression of repeated failures in direct assaults upon 
the Mussulman power from the Christian garrisons of 
Palestine ; and a conviction — which calamitous expe- 
rience alone had forced upon so rude an age of war- 
fare, but which a juster appreciation of the principles 
of martial science will confirm — that, in a military 
sense, Egypt, by its position and resources, is the key 
of Syria. By the conquest of Egypt, therefore, it was 
believed that the true seat of the Mussulman powerj* 
must be overthrown, and the recovery of Jerusalem 
effected ; and the situation of Damietta, at the mouth 



* Cont. Will. Tyr. p. 680, 681. Abulfeda, p. 260-263. Jacobus 
a Vitriaco, IHst. Ilierosol. (/;i Gextis Dei per Francos,^ p. 1129-1131. 
Bernardus Thesaur. (apud Muratoria, Scrip. Rer. Ital. vol. ii) p. 820- 
822. Matthew Paris, p. 244, 245. Godefridus Monachus, Annahs 
{apud Freher Marguard, Rer. German. Scriptorcs, vol. i. Ed. Tertia, 
1718,) p. 384-387. 

•f" Matthew Paris ascribes the design of carrying the war into 
Egypt to the advice of Pope Innocent III. 



TUE FIFTH CRUSADE. 367 

of the Nile, pointed out that city as the first object of 
attack.* 

The short passage from Acre to the Egyptian coast 
was effected by sea; and the crusading army, being 
safely landed under the walls of Damietta, imme- 
diately formed the siege of the place, [a. d. 1218.] 
In a furious assault from the galleys of the crusaders 
upon a castle in the river which defended the port, 
the Duke of Austria and the flower of the Christian 
knighthood were completely repulsed; but the walls 
of a tower were so shattered by the engines of the 
besiegers, that the garrison of the castle were terrified 
into a surrender. The hopes with which this first 
success inspired the Christians were shortly increased 
to the highest degree, by intelligence of the death of 
their most formidable enemy, the Sultan Saphadin ; 
and by the opportune and successive arrival of new 
bands of crusaders from Italy, France, and England, 

* The Monk of Cologne describes in a remarkable passage the 
commercial wealth and importance of Damietta : — " Hac via exeunt 
naves cum speciebus oneratas, venientes ab India, et tendentes versus 
Syriam, Antiocham, Armeniam, Graeciam et Cyprum ; et ab hoc tran- 
situ Rex Babylonia3 maximos recepit reditus. Htec civitas quasi 
caput et clavis est totius ^gypti; preecellit enim in munitione 
Babyloniam, Alexandriam, Tanaim (?) et cunctas civitates ^gypti. 
Godefridus Monachus, p. 388. (Ships laden with spices (from 
India,) and proceeding toward Syria, Antioch, Armenia, Greece, and 
Cyprus, pass out by this way; and the king of Babylon receives 
great returns by this route. This city is, as it were, both the head 
and the key of all Egypt; for it far surpasses in strength Babylon, 
Alexandria, and every other city of Egypt.) 



368 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

headed respectively by the papal legates, by the 
Counts of Nevers and La Marche, and by the Earls 
of Salisbury, Arundel, and Chester, But these nume- 
rous accessions of force served only to augment the 
blind confidence of the besiegers, and to introduce dis- 
union and discord into their camp, through the jealous 
and conflicting pretensions of so many chieftains of 
various nations. The intrigues of the papal legates to 
arrogate to themselves the general direction of the 
host, fomented, instead of healing, these dissensions; 
and while the unexpected desperation with which the 
defence of the city was protracted, converted the pre- 
sumption of the crusaders into anxiety and despond- 
ence, the usual horrors of famine and pestilence com- 
pleted their distress. At length the still heavier 
pressure of similar calamities within the walls of 
Damietta utterly exhausted the strength of its de- 
fenders; out of a population of near fourscore thou- 
sand souls, nine-tenths had perished of disease and 
hunger; [a. d. 1219;] and after a siege of seventeen 
months, the assailants forced their way into a city, 
which was filled only with the dead and the dying.'-' 

* Cont. AVill. Tyr. p. 682-G88. Abulfeda, p. 264-271. Jac. a 
Vitriaco, p. 1131-1134, &c. Godefridus, p. 387-391. Bernardus, 
p. 822-838. Matt. Paris, p. 253-259. This last writer gives a long 
and particular account of the siege of Damietta, and of the operations 
before the place. He draws a harrowing picture of the effects of the 
pestilence in Damietta, and exhibits a power of description which will 
bear no unfavourable comparison with more celebrated historical pas- 
sages on the same horrid theme. 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 369 

Both during the siege and after the capture of 
Damietta, the invasion of Egypt had filled the infidels 
with consternation; and the alarm which was be- 
trayed in their counsels proved that the crusaders, in 
choosing that country for the theatre of operations, 
had assailed the Mussulman power in its most vital 
and vulnerable point. Of the two sons of Saphadin, 
Coradinus and Camel, who were now uneasily seated 
on the thrones of Damascus and Cairo, the former, in 
despair of preserving Jerusalem, had already de- 
molished its fortifications; and the brothers agreed in 
repeatedly offering the cession of the holy city and of 
all Palestine to the Christians, upon the simple con- 
dition of their evacuating Egypt. Every object which 
had been ineffectually proposed in repeated Crusades, 
since the fatal battle of Tiberias, might now have 
been gloriously obtained by the acceptance of these 
terms; and the King of Jerusalem, the French and 
English leaders, and the Teutonic knights, all eagerly 
desired to embrace the offer of the sultans. But the 
obstinate ambition and cupidity of the surviving papal 
legate. Cardinal Pelagius, of the Italian chieftains, 
and of the knights of the other two religious orders, 
by holding out the rich prospect of the conc[.uest and 
plunder of Egypt, overruled every wise and temperate 
argument in the Christian councils, and produced a 
rejection of all compromise with the infidels. After a 
winter of luxurious inaction, the legate led the cru- 
sading host from Damietta toward Cairo ; [a. d. 1 220 ;] 

24 



370 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

but the infidels had employed the interval in vigorous 
preparation for a renewal of hostilities; the whole 
Mussulman force of Egypt and Syria was collected 
under Camel to oppose the Christian advance up the 
Nile f' and the cardinal legate showed himself as in- 
capable of conducting the war as he had been clamor- 
ous for its prosecution. While he hesitated to attack 
the sultan's army which obstructed the road to Cairo, 
and suffered the infidels to straiten his quarters, the 
Nile rose; the Egyptians, by opening the sluices in 
the canal of Ashmoum, inundated the Christian 
camp;* and the crusaders found themselves suddenly 
enclosed on all sides by the waters and the enemy. 
In this calamitous situation, which equally precluded 
their further advance or their retreat to Damietta, 
there remained only the choice of extermination by 
hunger, the elements, and the sword, or the disgrace- 
ful alternative of purchasing a peace, which they had 
lately refused to sell, by the surrender of Damietta. 
The legate, therefore, sent a suppliant embassy to the 

* A curious letter in Matthew Paris from an English crusading 
knight, Philip d' Aubeney, to the Earl of Chester, (who had returned 
home after the capture of Damietta,) rates the force of the Christian 
army which advanced up the Nile at a thousand knights, five thou- 
sand other cavalry, and forty thousand foot, p. 264. 

f The letter last quoted states that the water reached " usque ad 
braccarios et cinctoria, ad magnam miseriam et dolorem," (up to 
their hips and waists, causing great discomfort and pain.) And 
another letter from the Grand-Master of the Templars, which imme- 
diately follows, quaintly describes the army as enclosed by the waters, 
''sicut piscis reti includitur," (like as a fish enclosed in a net.) 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 371 

Mussulman camp with an offer of this price for per- 
mission to evacuate Egypt in safety ; and the Sultan 
of Cairo acceded to the prayer. The King of Jeru- 
salem himself became a hostage for the performance 
of the treaty; a free retreat to Damietta was allowed 
to the humbled and perishing remnant of the crusad- 
ing host ; and, on their embarkation, that city was 
delivered up to the infidels. The King of Jerusalem, 
with his barons and the knights of the three religious 
orders, then sailed to Acre; and the rest of the cru- 
saders, assuming the failure of the Egyptian war for a 
sufficient discharge from their voavs, gladly separated 
from their eastern brethren, and retraced their home- 
ward vo3^age to the shores of Europe. '=' 

Amid the sorrow and indignation excited throughout 
Europe by the abortive and disgraceful result of so 
hopeful an enterprise, its calamitous issue was loudly 
attributed by the crusaders, not without justice, to the 
presumption and incapacity of the legate Pelagius. 
But the new pope, Honorius III., laboured to trans- 
fer the public reproach from his servant upon the 
Emperor Frederic II., by charging to that monarch's 
continued evasion of repeated vows to join the Cru- 
sade, all the disasters which his presence in the East 
might have prevented. Frederic, however, was deaf 
to the papal censures, until an occasion was afforded 



* Cont. Will. TjT. p. 689-694. Abulfeda, p. 298-308. Bernar- 
dus, p. 839-844. Matt. Paris, uhi suj)rd. Godefridus, p. 392. 



372 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




Einrieror Fnrli rir 11. 



to Honorius of stimulating his zeal by the arrival 
from Palestine of Herman de Saltza, grand-master of 
the Teutonic knights, with a proposal for the mar- 
riage of the emperor with lolanta, daughter and 
heiress of John de Brienne : who, wearied of the inef- 
fectual struggle against the infidels, was willing to 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 373 

abdicate in her favour his titular crown of Jerusalem. 
The ambition of Frederic was dazzled by the prospect 
of adding this new, though little more than nominal 
honour to his other dignities ; and the young princess 
being brought to Italy by her father, the emperor re- 
ceived her hand, and with it, for her dower, a solemn 
transfer from John of his rights to the sovereignty of 
the Holy Land. As a condition of this renuncia- 
tion, Frederic on his part had previously engaged his 
honour to the pope and the grand-master of the mili- 
tary orders, [A. d. 1225,] that he would within two 
years lead a powerful army to Palestine, to achieve 
the reconquest of his new kingdom. The real or 
pretended impediments which for five years delayed 
his fulfilment of this jDledge; his quarrel with the 
papacy and excommunication by Gregory IX., the 
successor of Honorius ; and his final departure for the 
Holy Land, while still labouring under that sentence, 
and in defiance of the hostility of the pontiff; all be- 
long to the history of Italy, and must be sought in 
the annals of that country. 

The slender force with which Frederic embarked 
for Palestine, in a squadron of only twenty galleys, 
seemed so inadequate to the maintenance of his dig- 
nity, and the object of his voyage, as to excite the 
wonder of his own age at the attempt ; and the causes 
of his subsequent and rapid success, amid every 
obstacle which the pope with unrelenting enmity con- 
tinued shamelessly to oppose to his enterprise, must 



374 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

still be numbered among the unsolved problems of 
history.''' The Mussulman power, indeed, was now 
weakened by the fraternal dissensions of the Sultans 
of Cairo and Damascus ; [a. d. 1228 ;] and it has been 
conjectured that Frederic, from the outset of his ex- 
pedition, trusted to the effects of secret negotiations 
with the former of those potentates. But the death 
of his brother soon relieved Camel from the jealousy 
or dread with which the ambition of Coradinus had 
inspired him; and Frederic had thenceforth to con- 
tend with the undivided hostility of the Mussulman 
Empire. Meanwhile, he was deserted by the flower 
of the Christian chivalry in Palestine, and his weak- 
ness was betrayed to the infidels. The pope not only 
prohibited the knights of the religious orders from 
serving under the banners of an excommunicated 
prince, but actually despatched envoys to the sultan 
to dissuade him from negotiating with a leader whom 
the Christians disowned. Undismayed by this ini- 
quitous persecution, which perhaps, more than any 
event of the times, exposes the unprincipled policy of 
the Papal See, Frederic boldly took the field against 
the infidels. The Knights Templars and Hospitallers 
obeyed the prohibition of the pope, until their natural 
thirst for enterprise, or a generous sense of shame, 
induced them first to follow his march, and finally, to 

* The Monk of St. Alban's can account for tlie astonishing success 
of Frederic only by the direct interposition of Heaven in exciting 
dissensions " in gentibus Saracenis," (among the Saracenic races.) 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 375 

co-operate indirectly with the force which acknow- 
ledged his command. But the national affections of 
the Teutonic knights had more effectually and un- 
scrupulously prevailed over their dread of papal cen- 
sures; and at their head, with the scanty force of his 
own soldiery, the emperor advanced from Acre, 
occupied and refortified Jaffa, and approached Jeru- 
salem. At this juncture, and without any signal 
defeat of the infidels, or any explicable motive on the 
part of the sultan for concessions so important, we 
are surprised by the authentic record of a treaty, by 
which free access to the Holy City, together with the 
possession of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and other places, 
Avas restored to the Christians, and a peace for ten 
years was concluded between them and the Moslems. 
To signalize the acquisition of these honourable terms, 
Frederic resolved to celebrate his coronation at Jeru- 
salem. Under a plea that he still remained excom- 
municate, the patriarch refused to perform, and the 
Templars and Hospitallers to attend, the ceremony; 
but, accompanied by the Teutonic knights and the 
officers of his train, the emperor entered the Holy 
City, proceeded to the Church of the Sepulchre, and 
himself taking the crown from the altar, placed it on 
his head.* [a. d. 1229.] Immediately after this act, 

* Abulfeda, p. 336-363. Matt. Paris, p. 300-304. Godefridus, 
p. 396-397. But the most interesting account of Frederic's pro- 
ceedings is given in a letter from liimself to Henry III. of England 
in Matt. Paris, p. 300, 301. 



376 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

the state of alFairs in. Italy warning him of the neces- 
sity of his presence in that country, he returned to 
Acre, and there embarked for Europe, — having 
brought the Fifth Crusade to a successful conclusion, 
and obtained for the Christian cause in Palestine more 
than the arras of any other prince had been able to 
achieve since the conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin/-' 

These valuable fruits of the emperor's daring and 
ability were, by the mere wanton insolence or veno- 
mous hostility of faction, immediately neglected, and 
ultimatel}^ lost. The return of Frederic to Europe 



* It is difficult to determine what were the real conditions on 
which Frederic obtained access for the Christians to Jerusalem. The 
papal party laboured to deny that he had redeemed the Holy Sepul- 
chre from the hands of the infidels ; and a letter from the Patriarch 
of Jerusalem, (also in jNIatt. Paris,) among other charges, accuses him 
of having left the sacred places in their possession. But the invete- 
rate hostility which the Patriarch, the Templars and Hospitallers, and 
other papal adherents in Palestine, as well as in Europe, bore to 
Frederic, is sufficient to deprive their statements of all credit; and 
his" own public letter declares expressly that the Saracens were only 
to have the liberty of visiting the Temple of Solomon as pilgrims and 
unarmed, and adding, " civitatem Hierusalem, sicut meliiis unquam 
fuit, reasdificare nobis liceat secundum pactum" — (we are allowed by 
treaty to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, so that it shall be better than 
it ever was.) He farther states, that he had given orders accordingly 
for the rebuilding of the towers and walls of the Holy City ; but his 
intentions were evidently frustrated by the necessity for his hasty re- 
turn to Europe ; and it does not appear that any attempt was made 
to renew them by the resident Christians in Palestine. It is observa- 
ble, however, that the Mussulman version of the treaty in Abulfeda 
(?t6t supra) contains a stipulation that the fortifications of Jerusalem 
should not be rebuilt. 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 6i( 

was the signal for the open outbreaking of that dis- 
affection to his person and authority which had only 
been repressed through the awe excited by his 
presence; and resistance to the imperial title was 
now made the convenient pretext for the revival of 
the same spirit of internal discord and intrigue which 
had ever been the bane of the Christian fortunes in 
Palestine. The Empress lolanta having died in giv- 
ing birth to a son, the enemies of Frederic insisted 
that her rights to the sovereignty of Jerusalem had 
devolved, notwithstanding the existence of her child 
and the matrimonial title secured by treaty to her 
husband, upon her half-sister Alice, daughter of 
Isabella, by the third marriage of that queen with 
Henry of Champagne. Alice, the widow of Hugh de 
Lusignan, king of Cyprus, having arrived on the 
Syrian shore from that island, to assert her title to the 
throne of Palestine, a furious civil war commenced 
between her partisans and those of Frederic, [a. d. 
1230.] If the former were more numerous, their 
advantage was counterbalanced by the fidelity and 
courage with which the knights of the Teutonic order 
defended the cause of their national monarch until he 
was able to despatch reinforcements to his officers. 
The revolt of Palestine was at length composed, and 
the imperial authority restored, chiefly by the good 
offices of Pope Gregory IX., during the hollow recon- 
ciliation between that pontiff and Frederic, which had 
followed the arrival of the latter in Europe. But the 

32* 



378 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

dissensions of the Christians had meanwhile prevented 
any union of forces for their common security against 
the infidels ; no use had been made of the season of 
pacification obtained by Frederic's treaty, to improve 
the defences of the Holy Land; and finding the 
strength of the Latin kingdom consumed in intestine 
strife, the independent emirs of Syria were encouraged 
to disclaim any share in the peace which the Sultan 
had concluded, and began to renew their predatory 
hostilities from every quarter. In one of these incur- 
sions, they surprised and slaughtered a body of several 
thousand pilgrims of the Cross on the road between 
Acre and Jerusalem ; and upon another occasion the 
Templars, who arrogated to themselves the right of 
making war and peace on their own account, were de- 
feated in a campaign against the emir of Aleppo, with 
the heaviest loss which their order had suffered since 
the fatal field of Tiberias.* 

Every vessel from the shores of Syria now brought 
to Europe the intelligence of some fresh disaster, and 
quickened the public conviction of Christendom that a 
new Crusade was indispensable for the succour of the 
Holy Land. At the Council of Spoleto, the authority 
of the Church was again exerted to promulgate the 
necessity, and to command the preparation of another 
general armament against the Eastern infidels; and 
the Dominican and Franciscan friars were charged by 

* Sanutus, Sccrcta Fidelium Crucis, lib. iii. pars. xi. c. 13. Matt 
Paris, p. 374, &c. 



THE FIFTH CRUSADE. o/9 

the pope with the duty of preaching the sacred war, 
and of collecting contributions for its support. But 
the proceedings of these missionaries neither re- 
sponded to the impatience of the people, nor to the 
urgency of the danger. Instead of promoting the 
equipment of the thousands of warriors who assumed 
the Cross at their exhortations, the immense sums 
which they obtained for the service were either 
absorbed into the papal treasury,* or diverted, in 
shameless disregard of their own vows of poverty, into 
the coffers of their orders; and nearly seven years 
were suffered to elapse without any earnest attempt 
on the part of the pope or his agents for the relief of 
Palestine. The expectations of aid which were held 
out to the Christians in the East, during this interval, 
served only to hasten the ruin of their affairs ; for the 
Sultan of Egypt, in rage or alarm at the thick-coming 
rumours of invasion from Europe, resolved to antici- 
pate its object, and marching an army into Palestine, 
he once more expelled the Christians from Jerusalem.f 



* " Nee sciri poterat," says " Matthew Paris, " in quam abyssum 
tanta pecunia, qujs per Papales procurationes colligebatiu", est de- 
mersa," (nor could it be ascertained into wbat abyss so great a sum 
of money, collected by the papal government, was plunged,) p. 339. 

t Labbe, Concilia, vol. xi. p. 481. Matt. Paris, p. 337-340, 364, 
365. Sanutus, uhi supra. 



380 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




CHAPTER m. 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 




HE news of this event com- 
pleted the indignation which 
the dihitory and sordid evasions 
of the pope and his ministers 
had long excited in Europe, 
[A. D, 1238 ;] and the martial 
and religious enthusiasm of the 
Western chivalry was too ar- 
dently roused by the danger 
of the Christian cause in the 
East, to be longer restrained 
and deluded from its object by 
the selfish and avaricious policy 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE, 381 

of the papal court. Despite, therefore, of the facilities 
for commuting their vows for gold, the dissuasions, 
and even the direct prohibitions which were opposed 
by the papal authority to their enterprise, the nobles 
of France and England, who had now taken the 
Cross, were resolved at once to proceed to the Holy 
Land; and in the latter kingdom the crusading 
barons, meeting at Northampton, solemnly bound 
themselves to each other at the altar, that, lest they 
should be prevented from their design by any pretext 
of the Roman See, or cajoled to divert their arms to 
the effusion of Christian blood against the pope's ene- 
mies in Europe, they would within the year lead their 
forces direct to Palestine/'' The French Crusaders 
were the earliest to reach the Syrian shores. 
Thibaud, Count of ChamjDagne — a celebrated Trou- 
badour, and by marriage king of Navarre — the Duke 
of Burgund}^, the Counts of Bretagne, Montfort, and 
Bar, and many barons of distinction, safely landed 
with numerous bands of followers at Acre; and offen- 
sive warfare was immediately commenced against the 
infidels, by an advance to Ascalon. In this expe- 
dition the French were at first successful; and the 
Count of Bretagne with his followers bursting away 
from his confederates into the Mussulman territory, 

* Matt. Paris, p. 461-4G3. '' Et ne per cavillationes Romana3 
Ecclesiase honestum votum eorum impediretiir .... juraverunt 
omnes (and they all swore that they would not be hindered from ful- 
filling their honourable vow by the cavils of the Roman Church.) 



382 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




EicharJ, Earl of Cornwall. 

and ravaging it to tlie gates of Damascus, safely re- 
joined the army with immense spoil. But there was 
little concert in the operations of the crusaders; and 
the example of the Breton chivalry soon entailed 
upon their French compeers a disastrous defeat near 
Gaza, in which, during a similar incursion, the Count 
de Bar and other lords were slain, and Amoury de 
Montfort, with many nobles and knights, made cap- 
tive. This reverse so dispirited the king of Navarre, 
that he retreated with the whole army to Acre ; and 
thence the French leaders, accusing the Templars and 
Hospitallers of having deserted them in their need, for 
the most part returned to Europe.''' 



* Sanatus, lib. iii. pars xi. c. 15. 
Abulfeda, lib. iv. p. 488, 489. 



Matt. Paris, p. 474-488. 



THE SIXTH CEUSADE. 383 

Such had been the abortive result of the French 
Crusade, when Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of 
Henrj III., landed at Acre, accompanied by the 
flower of the English chivalry. The renown of this 
prince for personal prowess, the lineage of a Plan- 
tagenet, even the very name of Richard, which he 
bore in common with his uncle of the Lion Heart,'-' 
all seemed at his approach to inspire confidence into 
the Christians, and to strike the infidels with terror. 
On his arrival in Palestine, he seems to have been 
placed at the head of the Latin councils and forces 
almost by acclamation; and the weight of his presence 
was immediately felt in the intimidation of the Mus- 
sulmans. He found that the Templars on the one 
hand, and on the other the Hospitallers and French 
Crusaders, had concluded discordant treaties with the 
Emir of Karac, a vassal of the Court of Damascus, and 
with the Sultan of Cairo ; and his first act was to de- 

* So great was the awe inspired by the achievements of Coeur de 
Lion in the East, that, at the distance of half a century, his dreaded 
name was still used by Mussulman women to hush their refractory 
children. "Be quiet, be quiet, here is King Richard coming to fetch 
you." And if a horse started at a bush or a shadow, the infidel rider 
would chide his steed with the exclamation, "What! dost think King 
Richard is thei'e ?" Joinville (Johne's Translation,) p. 109. So 
also says jMatthew of Westminster of the respect obtained among the 
Moslems for Richard of Cornwall by the very memory of the name 
which he bore. " Casperunt nimis prudentiam et potentiam Comitis 
formidare, turn quia hoc nomen Richardus adhuc Saracenis inimicum 
ipsum intitulavit," &c., p. 304. (They began to fear greatly the pru- 
dence and power of the count, also because the very name Richard 
still signified an enemy to the Saracens.) 



384 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

mand from the former chieftain the fulfihnent of a 
promise to release the Christian captives who had 
been taken at the battle of- Gaza. On the hesitation 
or inability of the emir to restore these prisoners, the 
earl advanced with the Christian host to Jaffa; and 
this single movement sufficed to obtain all the objects 
of the war. Both the Sultans of Damascus and of 
Egypt hastened to negotiate with him; and so ably 
did he avail himself of the dissensions between these 
princes, and their common awe of his name and repu- 
tation, that he extorted from one or both a solemn and 
absolute cession of Jerusalem, and the greatest part of 
tlie territory of which the Latin kingdom, in its best 
days, had ever consisted. He had at the same time 
the satisfaction of receiving from the hands of the in- 
fidels all their Christian captives, among whom were 
thirty-three nobles, many Templars and Hospitallers, 
and five hundred knights and other crusaders of 
inferior rank. Finally, having remained in Palestine 
until the banner of the Cross was once more planted 
on the ruined walls of Jerusalem, the Earl of Corn- 
wall then, and not before the execution of the treaty, 
quitted the shores of Palestine, and in his homeward 
progress through the State of Europe, was everywhere 
Vv'elcomed with honour as the deliverer of the Holy 
Sepulchre.* 

* Sanutus, uhi supra et c. 16. Matt. West, p. 302-304. Matt. 
Paris, p. 479, 48G, 511, also p. 503-505. The pages last quoted 
contain the public despatch of the Earl of Cornwall himself, giving a 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 



385 




Frederic IT. 

The services which the Earl of Cornwall thus ren- 
dered to the Christian cause in Palestine did not, per- 
haps, excel in degree, and closely resembled in their 
form, those which the Emperor Frederic II. had ac- 
complished twelve years before. [A. d. 1240.] But 
the English prince was more fortunate than the 
German monarch in not having provoked the oppo- 
sition of the papal see, or the disaffection of the Latin 
chieftains of Palestine ; and while Frederic had been 
shunned and deserted in the East by the sworn 
champions of the Cross, and was basely defrauded of 
the well-earned fame of unassisted success by the 
malice of his enemies in Europe, Richard had been 



very clear and interesting account of his conduct, and of the treaty 
which he had extorted from the infidels 

25 



386 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

aided by the zealous co-operation of the crusading 
chivalry, and was rewarded with the undivided ap-, 
plause and gratitude of Christendom. The Templars, 
indeed, both before and after his departure from 
Palestine, displayed that proud and factious spirit of 
contention which forms the greatest, if not the only 
just reproach upon the memory of their illustrious 
order. To show their independence, they had refused 
to become parties to the late treaty with the Sultan 
of Egypt, and continued their hostilities against his 
subjects; but with this exception, unanimity for once 
prevailed in the Christian councils. While the patri- 
arch resumed the ecclesiastical charge of Jerusalem, 
the Hospitallers undertook, at their own cost, to re- 
build the fortifications of the Holy City; and the 
government of Frederic, as the feudal sovereign of 
Palestine, was established in tlie capital of the king 
dom.* But no leisure was afforded for the com- 
pletion of these salutary measures of organization and 
defence; and the recovery of Jerusalem had scarcely 
been achieved, before the feeble Latin kingdom was 
once more and suddenly overwhelmed by the violence 
of one of those tremendous tempests of barbarian war, 
which have, in various ages, overcast and desolated 
the face of Asia. The remote gathering of the storm, 
which now broke upon Palestine, must be observed in 
the far distant plains of Tartary; and before we 

* Matt. Paris, p. 534-543. 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 387 

hasten to the term of the present chapter, we shall be 
led, by no • unnatural connection with its principal 
subject, to take a brief survey of the revolutions of 
Asia during that epoch in the history of the world, 
which is defined by the commencement and close of 
the Crusades. 

Every vicissitude of conquest which afflicted the 
vast continent of Asia throughout the middle ages, 
had its origin among those restless and wandering 
tribes which overspread its central extent from the 
frozen deserts of Siberia to the banks of the Indus, 
and from the shores of the Caspian to the frontiers of 
China. Under various appellations, of which that of 
Tartars is the most recent and familiar, these same 
pastoral and predatory nations have at several periods, 
as often as some master-spirit has arisen to impel and 
guide their migrations, burst the bounds of their wild 
native regions, and inundated the more civilized seats 
of mankind with a terrific deluge. From this source 
had successively swept toward the West, the irrup- 
tions of the Huns at the downfall of the Roman Em- 
pire; of the Hungarians five centuries later; and of 
the Seljukian Turcomans in the following age. The 
establishment of a great empire, embracing Persia, 
Syria, and Asia Minor, by these Seljukian Tartars, 
and the terror which their successes excited in the 
Greek Emperors, have already been related among the 
proximate causes of the Crusades ; and in the Otto- 
man descendants of the same race, after the apparent 



388 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

extinction of its power and a long interval of obscu- 
rity in the mountains of the Lesser Asia, we are here- 
after to discover the conquerors of Constantinople.* 
In the course of the period marked by the Crusades, 
all the original dynasties of the Seljukians were over- 
whelmed and utterly obliterated by domestic revo- 
lution or foreign violence. On the aspect of Syria, 
indeed, this change impressed no new features ; for in 
that country the Turcoman cavalry was continually 
recruited by fresh swarms from the pristine seats of 
the nation ; and it was at the head of these kindred 
hordes that Saladin founded his empire on the com- 
mon subversion of the Atabec sovereignty of Damas- 
cus and the Fatimite khalifate of Egypt. But in 
Persia and in Asia Minor, or Roum, the catas- 
trophe was more violent; and the ruin of the 
monarchies, founded by the Seljukians in those 
countries, was among the desolating effects of a new 



* The Kharizmians, from whom the Ottomans are descended, were 
in fact of the same race as the Seljukian Turcomans, but issued two 
centuries later from their native plains. After their expulsion from 
Persia by the Moguls, a body of these Kharizmian Turcomans 
under Soliman Schah sought refuge in Asia Minor, and entered into 
the service of the Seljukian Sultans of Roum or Iconium. On the 
ruin of that dynasty by their old Mogul enemies, the Kharizmians 
under Othman, the grandson of their original leader Soliman, pre- 
served an independent existence in the mountains of Bithynia; the 
remains of the Seljukians were gathered to the same standard; and 
these Turcoman nations became blended into one people, and known 
in history by the name of Ottomans from that of their Kharizmian 
prince. De Guignes, Hist. Gcnerale des Huns, &c., vol. v. p. 328-337. 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 389 

and mighty irruption from the farthest recesses of 
Tartary,* 

About the first years of the thirteenth century, the 
formidable name and victorious progress of a new con- 
queror and nation of Tartarian race first broke upon 
the astonished world. From the wide upland plains 
beyond the great eastern desert which extend to the 
Chinese wall, issued a race described as countless in 
number, and as more horridly inhuman in aspect and 
spirit, and more utterly devoid of all civilization, than 
any of the destroyers of mankind who had been let 
loose from the Tartarian regions to desolate the earth. 
Their earliest appearance in authentic history is 
under the general term of Moguls; and under the 
guidance of a leader, whose proper designation of 
Temudgin has almost been lost in the national 
title, which was arrogated for his grandeur, of Zingis 
Khan, or the Mightiest of Lords. He was the son of 
a khan who had reigned over thirteen hordes; and it 
is probable that the immense masses of the same 
generic features, who were drawn to his standard by 
the results of conquest or the thirst of rapine, derived 
their common term of Moguls from the original dis- 
tinction of his own tribe. The early fortunes of a bar- 
barian conqueror, the founder of his own greatness, 

* In Persia the original dynasty of the Seljukians had already 
been supplanted by that of the Sultans of Korasm; but the con- 
querors, as above observed, were of kindred Turcoman stock. De 
Guignes, vol. ii. lib. xiv. 



390 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




I 



Zinr/is Khan. 

are always obscure; the unlettered"-^ traditions of 
nomadic savages must be equally destitute of authen- 
ticity and interest; [A. d. 1206;] and we may at once 
dismiss the tale of vicissitudes, whether fabulous or 
real, which are ascribed to the youth of Zingis. He 
first burst the limits of his native Tartar reign, to pre- 
cipitate his myriads upon the plains of China ; the 
great wall proved but a feeble barrier against his 
innumerable cavalry; and after a desolating war- 
fare he tore five great provinces of the north from 



* Zingis himself could neither read nor write, and it was not until 
the lapse of near a century, that the traditions of his life were col- 
lected by order of a Persian khan, his great-grandson. Do la Croix, 
Histoire du Grand Genghizcan, (Paris, 1716,) p. 536-539. 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 391 

the huge buf ill-cemented fabric of the Chinese 
dominion. 

The complete conquest of that empire seems only to 
have been suspended by a diversion which was given 
to the Mogul arms. The murder of his ambassadors 
by command of Mohammed, the Kharizim Sultan of 
Persia, afforded Zingis a just cause of war; and, 
traversing the wide expanse of Tartary, he descended 
into Western Asia at the head of an incredible force 
of seven hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars. On 
the great plains which are intersected by the Sihon or 
Jaxartes, and the Oxus, he was encountered by the 
Turcoman Sultan with an inferior host of four hun- 
dred thousand men ; and in the stupendous conflict, 
the victorious Moguls slaughtered nearly the half of 
their enemies. This success laid all Persia open to 
the destroyers ; and, stimulated by vengeance to even 
more than their ordinary inhumanity, they spread a 
frightful devastation, from the eilects of which those re- 
gions have perhaps never recovered, from the shores of 
the Caspian to the banks of the Indus, [a. d. 1224.] 
The Sultan Mohammed, flying from the storm which 
he had provoked, found an inglorious safety and 
obscure death in one of the desert islands of the 
Caspian; but his valiant son Gelaleddin, whose ex- 
ploits became the darling theme of Persian song, still 
opposed, with the remnant of the Turcoman bands, a 
heroic though fruitless resistance to the progress of 
the victors. In many a well-sustained combat, his 



392 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

long retreat to the banks of the Indus was tracked by 
the blood of his pursuers; and boldly plunging with 
his steed into the broad and rapid current of that 
river, he was suffered, by the admiration which his 
prowess extorted from Zingis — the only trait of gene- 
rosity in the recorded actions of the barbarian — to 
escape unmolested. The Indus was for a season the 
term of Mogul devastation; and, unable to command 
the further progress of his satiated hordes, or recalled 
to Tartary by a revolt of some chieftains, whom he 
easily subjugated, Zingis slowly led back his myriads, 
laden with the spoils of Persia, to their native plains. 
In these regions he shortly closed his destructive 
career by a natural death, enjoining his children, as 
his last command, to complete the conquest of the 
Chinese empire."' 

This injunction was imposed upon a race to whom 
repose was intolerable, and motion and rapine the 
dearest qualifications of life. The four sons of Zingis — 
Octal, Touslii, Tooti, and Zagatai — were the inheritors 
alike of his wild genius and expansive dominion ;f 



* D'Herbelot, Bihliotheque Orienfale, Art. Genghizcan, Gelalcd- 
din. DelaCroix, Hist, du Grand Genghizcan, passim. De Guignes, 
Hist. Gen. des Huns, vol. iv. lib. xv. 

■|" " He had many other sons, but these wei'e the only princes em- 
ployed in great stations, and destined by their father for monarchy — 
probably on account of their high descent by their mother, Burta 
Koutchin, the daughter of Zei Nevian, chief of the tribe of Konharat, 
the first in rank among the five principal wives of Chenghiz, all of 
whom were of high birth. — Malcolm s Persia, 1. f. p. 260. (Note.) 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 393 

and with a spirit of fraternal or prudential concord, 
more remarkable than their native ability, the latter 
three were satisfied to enjoy dependent sovereignties 
under their brother Octai, who was elevated by their 
consent to a general supremacy, under the title of 
Great Khan, over the Mogul and Tartar nations. 
By these sons of Zingis and their immediate succes- 
sors, the Mogul arms were carried from the shores of 
the Pacific Ocean to the banks of the Euphrates, the 
Danube, and the Vistula; in little more than half a 
century had conquered or overrun nearly all Asia, 
and no inconsiderable part of Europe; and, at the 
close of the period embraced in this chapter, their 
descendants reigned over China, Tartary, Persia, 
Russia, and Siberia. The total subjugation of the 
first of these countries was reserved for Kublai, one 
of the grandsons of Zingis; but of the two empires 
into which it had been divided, the northern, already 
dismembered during the life of Zingis, was completely 
swallowed up in the Mogul dominion five years after 
his death. Other enterprises suspended the fate of 
the southern dynasty of the Chinese for about forty 
years; and when Kublai had achieved its fall and 
extinction, the unity of the Mogul power was already 
broken by the separation of its vast branches. Mean- 
while, the race of Zingis were seated on independent 
thrones in Russia, Western Tartary, and Persia. 
Only eight years after his death, another of his grand- 
sons. Baton, was intrusted by the Great Khan Octal 



394 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

with the command of a host of five hundred thousand 
Moguls, for the invasion of Russia. [A. d. 1235.] In 
the resistless progress of such swarms, the princes of 
that devoted land were overwhelmed; the country 
devastated, its capitals of Moscow and Kio burned to 
ashes ; the rude national independence destroyed ; 
and the Mogul yoke permanently fastened on the 
people for two hundred years. With continued vio- 
lence the Tartar invasion swept over Poland, Hun- 
gary, and the circumjacent regions, from the shores 
of the Baltic'^'" to those of the Euxine and Adriatic. 
In the battle of Legnitz, the Duke of Siberia, the 
Teutonic Order, and the Polish Palatines were routed 
with tremendous slaughter; [A. d. 1242;] in a single 
conflict, the King of Hungary, Bela IV., was so 
utterly defeated, that he abandoned his realm to its 
ruin. Amid the consternation of Christendom, Ger- 
many, and perhaps all Western Europe, was only 
saved by the firmness and energy with which the 
Emperor Frederic II. exhorted its princes and chi- 

* A singular example of tlie effect of the Mogul conquests has been 
noticed by Gibbon, from a passage in Matthew Paris, p. 398. The 
destruction caused by the approach of the Moguls to the Baltic pre- 
vented the inhabitants of that coast from sending their vessels to Eng- 
land, in 1238, to take in cargoes of herrings as usual ; so that, as there 
was no exportation, forty or fifty of those fish sold for a shilling. "It 
is whimsical enough," as the historian observes, "that the arms of a 
Khan, who reigned in China, should have affected the price of fish in 
the English market :" but the passage is also curious, as illustrating 
the existence of a regular herring fishery, and of so active a commer- 
cial intercourse between England and the North, in that early age. 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 395 

valry to arm for the general defence against a com- 
mon and merciless enemy.* The progress of the 
Moguls was first arrested by the gallant defence of a 
few knights and soldiers in the Austrian city of 
Neustadt, by their own distrustful ignorance of the 
art of sieges, and probably by respect for the ex- 
perienced prowess and superior skill of the gathering 
chivalry of the West. From its first obstruction at 
Neustadt, the huge inundation of Tartar warfare 
began slowly to recede, and at last rolled back its 
waves to the deserts of Asia.f 

* See the version of his circular letter in Matthew Paris, p. 49G- 
498, addressed to the King of England, and exhorting him as well as 
other princes, by the arguments of a common religion and danger to 
unite in despatching succours for the defence of the frontiers of Ger- 
many — '' velut Christianorum januam" — the gate, as it were, of the 
Christians. 

f A lively picture of the terror of Christendom at the progress of 
the Tartars is afforded by many passages and letters in the History of 
the Monk of St. Alban's, especially in p. 487, 496-498, 538-540, and 
Additamenta, p. 1128-1131. A frightful estimate of the numbers 
of a Tartar host is given in the assertion, that it covered twenty days' 
journey in length, and fifteen in breadth ! One description — which, 
it is curious, (p. 539,) was obtained from an outlawed Englishman, who 
had wandered eastward from Palestine, fallen among those barbarians, 
and entered Europe with them as interpreter — accurately presents the 
genuine lineaments of the Mongolian race. " Habent autem pectora 
dura et robusta, facies macras et pallidas, scapulas rigidas et erectas, 
nasos distortos et breves, menta proeminentia et acuta, superiorem 
mandibulam humilem et profundam, dentos longos et raros, palpebras 
a crinibus usque ad nasum protensas, oculos inconstantes et nigros, 
aspectus obliquos et torvos, &c." (They have large ;.nd strong bodies, 
thin and pale faces, high and stiff shoulders, short and misshapen 
noses, projecting and sharp chins, retiring and deep upper jaws, long 
teeth and few of them, eyelids extending from the hair to the nosC; 



396 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

The state, meanwhile, of the Mogul power in the 
central expanse of that quarter of the globe — which 
in the triple partition of the dynasty of Zingis formed 
the Empire of Western Tartary — may be overlooked 
in its uninteresting obscurity; [a. d. 1258;] but the 
second invasion and conquest of the southern regions 
of Asia had some effects, more important and durable, 
upon the aspect of the civilized world. The per- 
manent subjugation of Persia was the work of Hola- 
gou, a third mighty victor among the grandsons of 
Zingis. That kingdom was again bravely defended 
by the hero Gelaleddin, who, on the first withdrawal 
of the Moguls to their native plains, had returned 
from India, and resumed the possession of his ruined 
throne. But his efforts were again fruitless against 
the innumerable Tartarian swarms ; and after sus- 
taining a contest of eleven years and the vicissitudes 
of fourteen great battles, he closed a career, which was 
worthy of a better termination, by a sluggish old 
age and an inglorious death in the fastnesses of Tur- 



black and unsteady eyes, and a doubtful and fierce look.) Their 
ferocity could hardly be exaggerated, for assuredly they spared neither 
age, sex, nor condition; yet their cannibalism, though asserted by eye- 
witnesses, and easily credited throughout Europe, may be doubted. 
" Victi quoquenon supplicant, et vincentes non parcunt," (when van- 
quished they ask no quarter, and when victors they give none,) is the 
emphatic evideiro of a war of extermination ; and their very women, 
warlike and ferocious as themselves, Avere wooed for their powers of 
destruction. " Et quae melius pugnat, concupiscibilior habetur" (and 
she who fights best, is thought most worthy of marriage.) p. 1131, 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 397 

kestan. After the subjection of Persia, the crowning 
triumph of Holagou was the capture of Bagdad, the 
extinction of the once splendid Khalifate of the Abas- 
sides, and the death of the last sovereign pontiff of a 
religion which the idolatrous conquerors^ were at a 
subsequent period to embrace and extend. The 
feeble Mostasem, the representative of the long line 
of Khalifs, who boasted their descent from the kins- 
man of Mohammed, and who had reigned in Asia for 
five centuries, was hunted from his throne, and mur- 
dered by command of Holagou ; and with him expired 
the union of spiritual and temporal supremacy, long 
become, indeed, more nominal than real, which the 
reverence of the Moslem world had constantly re- 
cognised, and the ambition of usurpers had as per- 
petually violated, in the family of their prophet. 
While the Turcoman dynasty of Persia and the Abas- 
sidan Khalifate were thus finally swept away, the 
ravages of the same tempest spread over Asia Minor 
and Armenia, and approached the confines of Syria. 
In the former country, the Seljukian dynasty of Roum 
was overwhelmed in the deluge of Mogul invasion; 
the Christian principalities of Armenia shared the 
same fate ; and it was only some unexplained change 
of course in the barbarian movements, rather than 
any foreign resistance opposed to their progress, that 
delayed their appearance on the shores of the Bos- 
phorus and the Mediterranean.* 

* The foregoing narrative of the conquests of the Moguls under 



398 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

But even tlie secondary consequences of their vic- 
tories were fatal to the Christian power in Syria ; and 
we are recalled to the History of the Crusades by the 
effects of their conquest of Persia. When the fall of 
Gelaleddin dispersed the Turcoman or Kharizmian 
hordes which he had gathered to his standard for the 
defence of his realm, one of these tribes, flying before 
the Moguls, in the second year after the recovery of 
Jerusalem by the Earl of Cornwall, approached the 
frontiers of Palestine with the purpose of demanding 
a settlement in Egypt. Alarmed at their appearance, 
the sultan, to divert such unwelcome guests from his 
own states, and irritated against the Christians by 
some unprovoked hostilities of the Templars, advised 
them to establish themselves in Palestine; and, 
guided by an Egyptian emir with a body of his 
master's troops, Barbacan, the Kharizmian chief, en- 
tered the Holy Land at the head of twenty thousand 
cavalry. The ruined defences of Jerusalem had not yet 
been sufficiently restored to sustain a siege; the city was 
abandoned by the knights of the military orders on 
the approach of the invaders; [A. d. 1242 ;] and the 
savage Kharizmians, bursting into the place, made a 
horrid and indiscriminate massacre of all the remain- 
ing inhabitants. By the rapacious or wanton fury of 
these barbarians, both Christian and Moslem sanc- 

the successors of Zingis has been abridged chiefly from De Guignes, 
vol. iv. lib. xvi.-six., &c., with references to the more modern text of 
Gibbon, ch. Ixiv. 



THE SIXTH CRUSADE. d99 

tuaries were profaned and pillaged with equal alac- 
rity; the very sepulchres were violated, the remains 
of the dead disinterred and rifled; and the most 
sacred and valuable relics of Jerusalem involved in a 
general destruction.* 

To arrest the progress of invaders more fierce and 
inhuman than any by whom Syria had previously 
been desolated, the Christian chivalry made common 
cause with the Moslems of Damascus, Aleppo, and 
Ems; and the sultans of all these territories sent suc- 
cours to the knights of the military orders. But the 
united force of these confederates was still inferior to 
that of the Egyptians and Kharizmians; and when 
the rash exhortations of the patriarch of Jerusalem 
induced the knights to hazard a battle, they suffered a 
terrible defeat. Their Syrian allies were routed and 
dispersed; the grand-masters, both of the Hospital and 
Temple, fell on the field; and of the whole Christian 
chivalry, only twenty-six Hospitallers, thirty-three 
Templars, and three Teutonic knights, escaped from 
the general slaughter.-|- Tiberias, Ascalon, and other 
fortresses of the Latin kingdom, successively fell, 
either carried by storm or abandoned to the victors ; 
[A. D. 1244 ;] the whole country was left a prey to 
their ravages ; and the remains of the Christian chi- 
valry and inhabitants shut themselves up in their last 

* Matt. Paris, p. 546-549, 556-558. Makrisi, (in Joinville, 
Johne's Translation,) vol. ii. p. 235. 
f Matt. Paris, p. 557. 



400 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

strougliold of Acre. By subsequent dissensions be- 
tween the Egyptians and Kharizmians, Palestine was 
delivered from the presence of the latter; the Mos- 
lems of Syria and Egypt felt the necessity of reunit- 
ing to crush intruders so destructive ; the barbarians, 
after capturing Damascus, were utterly defeated in a 
general engagement by the Sultan of Egypt; their 
leader Barbacan was slain; and their whole horde 
was slaughtered or dispersed, or driven back upon the 
Eastern deserts. But this expulsion of the Khariz- 
mians produced no relief to the Christian cause in 
Palestine. The Holy Sepulchre still remained in the 
hands of the Syrian or Egyptian infidels; the Latin 
kingdom had again well nigh dwindled into the single 
fortress of Acre; and the extremity to which its de- 
fenders were reduced, once more suggested to the 
martial and religious feelings of Europe the necessity 
of a new Crusade.* 

* Matt. Paris, ubi supra et 599-639. Joinville, p. 209-211, and 
Makrisi, (ibid.,) p. 236-238. 



t 




THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 



401 




View on the Nile. 



SECTION IV. 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 




HE design of this sacred enter- 
prise was ratified, as usual, in 
a general assembly of the La- 
tin Church; and at a council, 
which was convoked at Lyon 
for this among other purposes, 
by Pope Lmocent IV., it was 
resolved that a Crusade should 
be preached, [A. d. 1245,] and 
all temporal wars suspended 
for four years throughout Chris- 
tendom. The troubled state of 

26 



402 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

Germany and Italy, and the renewed quarrel between 
the Emperor Frederic II. and the papacy, seem to 
have prevented the missionaries of the Holy War 
from meeting with much success in those countries ; 
but the effects of their preaching extended to remoter 
regions, and Haco, King of Norway, assumed the 
Cross.* It was in France and England, however, that 
the flame of enthusiasm was most ardently and effectu- 
ally rekindled, chiefly through the example of Louis 
IX., w^hose character was almost equally revered by 
both nations ; and on the intelligence of whose pur- 
pose William Longsword, (the former crusading com- 
panion of the Earl of Cornwall,) with the Bishop of 
Salisbury, the Earl of Leicester, Walter de Lacy, and 
many other English nobles and knights, vowed to 
serve under his standard. The Norwegian monarch 
having been diverted from his enterprise by some un- 
explained causes, the prosecution of the Holy War 
was abandoned to the chivalry of France and Eng- 
land; and the events of the Seventh Crusade are con- 
fined to the expedition of St. Louis and his insular 
auxilaries.f 

* Matt. Paris, p. 643. 

f Our sufficient guide, for the events of the Seventh Crusade, will 
be that good knight John, Lord de Joinville, grand-seneschal of 
Champagne, the faithful companion of St. Louis, and actor in the 
scenes which he describes, whose memoirs have been enriched, both 
by the notes and dissertations of Du Cange, and by extracts from 
such Arabian MSS. as illustrate the subject before us. The text of 
the contemporary national historian, Matthew Paris, will also, how- 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 



403 




Blanche of Castile. 

During his absence on the Crusade, Louis IX. left 
his kingdom under the administration of his mother, 
the celebrated Blanche of Castile. 

In Cyprus, the general rendezvous of the expedition, 
Louis was joined by a long array of the baronage of 
France, with their knights and men-at-arms, and. 



ever, supply some notices of the share of the English crusaders in the 
expedition. But the perfect good faith which breathes through the 
narrative of the Marshal of Champagne, the affection with which he 
describes the virtues and cherishes the memory of the excellent 
prince whom he followed, and the unaffected simplicity with which 
he confesses every emotion of a spirit, too truly brave for conceal- 
ment of its fears, and too pious, with all his superstition, not to claim 
our respect, altogether give a charm and value to his lively relation, 
which is scarcely to be found in any other authority of the times, 
and fill the realities of chivalric adventure with more delightful and 
moviniz: interest than all the creations of romance. 



104 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




Ilaco, King of Norway. 

among others, by the noble historian of the Holy 
War/-= [A. D. 1248.] Eight months were consumed 
with little necessity or prudence, it should seem, 

* Nothing can be more toucliing than Joinville's expressions of his 
feelings on quitting his native land and kindred on so distant and 
perilous an enterprise. *' But as I was journeying from Bliecourt tn 
St. Urban, I was obliged to pass near to the Castle of Joinville ; I 
dared never turn my eyes that way for fear of feeling too great re- 
gret, and lest my courage should fail on leaving my two fine children, 
and my fair castle of Joinville, which I loved in my heart." His 
descriptions always bring the scene before our eyes. " They all 
with a loud voice sang the beautiful hymn of Vent Orcator from the 
beginning to the end; and while they were singing, the mariners set 
their sails in the name of God. Instantly after, a breeze of wind 
filled our sails, and soon made us lose sight of land, so that we saw 
only sea and sky," &c., p. 118, 119. (Johnes's Translation.) His 
naloe reflection immediately afterward, on the prudence of carrying a 
good conscience to sea, we have elsewhere quoted. 



iiiifffsif";i'f'^^'~ 



' ' I'll fli|!!;f!f pf f:!™|l5'ii!l'iif ill'ii'f :!'!] 







406 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

before the congregated host finally proceeded to its 
destmed scene of action. In imitation of the plan of 
the Fifth Crusade, Egypt, as the principal seat of the 
Moslem power, was again selected for the theatre of 
operations, the capture of Damietta for the first enter- 
prise of the war; and by a strange blindness or fa- 
tality, the very errors which had entailed destruction 
thirty years before upon a Christian army on the 
same shores, were now faithfully copied or repeated. 
The armament with which Louis sailed from the 
shores of Cyprus covered the sea with eighteen hun- 
dred vessels, great and small, and contained full two 
thousand eight hundred knights, with their horses 
and an attendant cavalry of six or seven thousand 
men-at-arms, and a force of infantry which has been 
variously estimated at from fifty to above one hun- 
dred thousand.* But a violent tempest, blowing 
from the Egyptian coast, so dispersed this immense 
armada that, when the French king made the port of 
Damietta, he had not with him above seven hundred 
knights. The numerous forces of the sultan lined the 
shore, and so awed and astounded the French by 

* If an Arabian historian may be credited, Louis afterward declared 
to one of the officers of tbe Egyptian Sultan that he had landed with 
nine thousand knights, five thousand horse, and one hundred and 
thirty thousand foot, including workmen and servants. See Arahic 
Extracts appended to Joinville, p. 2G2. But this is doubtless an ex- 
aggeration of Moslem vanity; and a passage in Makrisi, (^ihkl., p. 254,) 
which estimates the whole force at seventy thousand men, is probably 
much nearer the truth. 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 407 

their imposing array, and the clang of their trumpets 
and kettle-drums, that the councillors of Louis ad- 
vised him to defer his landing until the junction of 
his absent knights; but the gallant monarch, who 
dreaded a continued exposure of his armament to the 
perils of the sea much more than the numbers of the 
infidels, resolved on an immediate attack; and him- 
self, in complete armour, with his shield pendent from 
his neck, his lance on his wrist, and the oriflamme 
borne before him, leaping into the waves breast high, 
was among the foremost who reached the shore. The 
Mussulmans were so panic-stricken at the boldness of 
the Christian debarkation, that they not only fled 
from the strand, but abandoned the city of Damietta, 
though it had been furnished with a numerous gar- 
rison, and was more strongly fortified than when, in 
the former Crusade, it had sustained a siege of 
eighteen months. [A. d. 1249.] Before the infidels 
fled, however, they set fire in many places to the 
trading quarter of Damietta,* which, with much valua- 

* la consequence of this destruction of merchandise, the booty cap- 
tured, although Damietta had long been the emporium of Egypt, was 
small, not exceeding six thousand livres in value ; and Louis incurred 
great obloquy by appropriating the whole of it to himself, contrary 
(0 '-the good and ancient customs" observed in the Holy Land, by 
which one-third of all spoil went to the king, and the remaining two- 
thirds were shared among the crusaders. To this act, which seems 
strangely at variance with the usual conduct of so scrupulous an 
observer of justice as the "good saint," Joinville says he was insti- 
uated by the ill advice of a prelate, and the assent of his council. 
P. 12G. 



408 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

ble merchandise, was utterly consumed; and the 
French, astonished at their own success, took posses- 
sion of the deserted city, and impatiently awaited the 
arrival of the remainder of their scattered armament/'' 
The crusaders, however, soon discovered that it 
was no more than a transient panic which had de- 
livered Damietta into their hands ; and they them- 
selves were shortly besieged within its walls by the 
army of the sultan. The throne of Eg^'pt was at 
this epoch filled by Nedjmeddin, grandson of Sa- 
phadin, brother of the great Saladin, a prince of 
courage and ability; who, on intelligence of the 
meditated invasion of the French, had been recalled 
from his career of conquest in Syria to the defence of 
his kingdom ; and who, though afflicted with a mortal 
disease, had succeeded in reaching the banks of the 
Nile some time before the Christian descent. His 
first act, on learning the flight of the garrison of 
Damietta, was to punish fifty of their officers with 
the death which their cowardice deserved ; his next, 
to hasten, ill as he was, to the scene of danger, as- 
sume the personal command of all the levies of 
Egypt, which he summoned to his standard, and in- 
vest on all sides the Christian position. The gather- 
ing numbers of the infidels already began to straiten 

* Joinville, p. 116-128. Makrisi, p. 238-242. See also several 
letters in Matthew Paris from the Count d'Artois, the master of the 
Templars, and others, announcing the capture of Damietta. Addita- 
menta, p. 1090-1094. 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 409 

Louis and his followers in Damietta, when their 
anxiety was relieved by the junction of those parts 
of their expedition which had been dispersed on the 
voyage from Cyprus, and driven into Acre, together 
with a body of English nobles and knights, under 
William Longsword. Notwithstanding the arrival of 
these reinforcements, however, much time was lost in 
mischievous inaction at Damietta, interrupted only 
by skirmishes with the infidels; and the crusading 
host fell into licentious excesses and disorders,* which 
their victorious leader wanted either power or energy 
to repress, and to which their pious historian does not 
hesitate to ascribe the wrath of God and the subse- 
quent ruin of their enterprise.f 

At length it was resolved to advance to Cairo; and 
the Christian army began to ascend the branch of the 
Nile from Damietta towards that capital.J The 

* After describing the debaucheries of the nobility, Joinville adds, 
Et le commun peuple se print a forcer ct violer femmes et Jilles. 
Dont de ce advint grant mal. Car ilfaihit que le roy en donnait con- 
(jie (was obliged to wink) d tout plain de ses gens et officicrs. Car 
ainsi que le hon roy me dist, il trouve j'usques dung gect de pierre 
pris et d Ventour de son paveillon plusieurs hordeaux, que ses gcnf: 
tcnoient. (The commonalty likewise gave themselves np to de- 
bauchery, and violated both women and girls. Great were the e\ih 
in consequence, for it became necessary for the king to wink at the 
greatest liberties of his ofl&cers and men. The good king even told 
me, that at a stone's throw round his own pavilion were several 
brothels.) Ed. Paris, 1668, p. 32. 

t Joinville, p. 128-132. Matthew Paris, p. 664. 

J There is an inexplicable tale in eToinville of the treacherous con- 
duct of the sultan, who sent five hundred horse to guide the Chris- 



410 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

march along the bank of the river, notwithstanding 
the resistance of the Moslems, was successfully 
though slowly accomplished, as far as Mansoura ; but 
with the capture of that town commenced the disas- 
ters of the Crusade. At the head of the flower of 
the French and English chivalry, the Count d'Artois, 
one of the brothers of Louis, being detached to effect 
the passage of the Ashmoum canal,* near that place, 

tian army, and thus led his enemies into a snare ! The French were 
enjoined not to injure any of these Mussulmans, who, however, sud- 
denly turned upon the Templars in the van, attacked them by sur- 
prise, and were immediately cut to pieces by that fiery chivalry. It 
seems inconceivable that the " good king" should have been gulled 
by so clumsy a stratagem, and may rather be suspected that the in- 
fidels were deserters, who were sacrificed to some suspicion of the 
impetuous Templars. P. 132. 

* "VYe omit a long account in Joinville of some unavailing efforts 
of the French, under cover of their chas-chatails, or wooden towers, 
to throw a causeway over the canal of Ashmoum. These machines, 
as fast as they were built, the infidels destroyed with the Greek fire, 
of the appalling effects of which the brave knight gives a woful de- 
scription. The whole passage (p. 134-138) forms a valuable illus- 
tration of middle-age warfare, but is unimportant to our present 
narrative, as the French were unsuccessful in all their efforts, and 
were at last enabled to pass the canal only by the treason of a Be- 
douin, who betrayed to them the existence of a ford through the cur- 
rent. But it may be observed as a curious fact, that, throughout the 
operations of this disastrous campaign, the superiority of the Orien- 
t;ils over the Latins in martial science is very evident. Of the com- 
position of the celebrated Greek fire, to the marvellous efiects of 
which the mediaeval historians and annalists bear such ample and 
r^uch frequent testimony, nothing whatever is known with certainty. 
It was invented or discovered by Callinicus of Heliopolis in Syria, in 
the year 6G8, who was probably a master-builder or architect ; and 
having communicated the secret of its preparation to the Greeks, it 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 411 

rashly pursued the flying infidels into the town, with- 
out deigning to listen to the experienced counsel of 
William Longsword, and the grand-master of the 
Templars, to await the support of the main body of 
the army. The conduct of the French prince was 
marked by the same vaunting temerity which, in so 
many previous and subsequent combats of the Middle 
Ages, led the national chivalry of France into head- 
long destruction. Stung by his insolent reproaches, 
Longsword and his English brethren, the masters of 
the Temple and Hospital, with the knights of both 
orders, vied with the French in the blind precipitation 
of their valour; they burst into the town of Man- 
soura ; and when the fury of their charge had thrown 
the w^hole body into confusion, they were enveloped 
in the place by the rallying infidels, and totally 



was preserved by them for four centuries, when, by some means or 
other, it was procured by the Moslems, who, as we see above, em- 
ployed the Greek fire with destructive force against the army of 
King Louis. Asphalt, or mineral bitumen, sulphur, and petroleum, 
or mineral oil, are all supposed to have been used in its composition, 
though in what proportions it is impossible now to ascertain ; and 
Anna Comncna expressly mentions the pitch obtained from ever- 
green firs. It was projected in various forms, and from various kinds 
of instruments, and was inextinguishable by water, but extinguish- 
able by sand, vinegar, and other liquids. It was imdoubtedly the 
most formidable material of war known to the Middle Ages, though 
its employment would seem to have been confined wholly to Eastern 
Europe and Asia IMinor; but after the discovery of gunpowder, in 
the fourteenth century, we hear no more of its use as an implement 
of destruction. 



412 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

routed. The Count d'Artois himself — the author of 
the calamity — William Longsword, and the master of 
the Templars, the victims of his presumption, and a 
host of other gallant knights, were all slain on the 
spot, or grievously wounded ; the master of the Hos- 
pitallers fell alive into the enemy's hands; and the 
remnant of the band were rescued from the same fate 
only by the advance of the main army under the 
king himself; who, after performing prodigies of per- 
sonal valour, succeeded in compelling the Moslems to 
retire.''' 

This equivocal victory was, however, without ad- 
vantage to the Christians; and their critical position 
only served, on the contrary, to inspire new confidence 
into the infidel host. Nedjmeddin himself was now 
dead, having lately expired under the incurable 
malady against which his spirit had bravely striven ; 



* Joinville, p. 132-148. Matt. Paris, p. 672-680, 685. Makrisi, 
p. 245-248. For the relation in the test of the part taken by the 
English crusaders in the calamitous action of Mansoura, we are in- 
debted to the monk of St. Alban's. Joinville, from respect probably 
to the memory of the Count d'Artois, has passed in silence over the 
tale of the fatal rashness by which that prince brought such ruin on 
the crusading cause, and has omitted the name of Longsword among 
the victims of his presumption. It is more remarkable that, from 
whatever cause, the good seneschal has never once, we believe, di- 
rectly noticed the share of the English in the crusade ; and a single 
observation, that Louis assigned a certain post to "the Duke of Bur- 
gundy and the nobles beyond seas, his allies," (p. 139) is the only 
passage in which he deigns to record the presence or services of these 
foreign auxiliaries among his countrymen. 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 413 

but his death was carefully concealed until the arrival 
of his son and successor, Touran-Shah, in the Moslem 
camp ; the government was administered by the sul- 
tana, in the name of her deceased lord; and the func- 
tions of a commander-in-chief were skilfully per- 
formed, and the courage of the troops sustained, by 
Bibars, general of the Mamelukes, Avho himself, in 
the sequel, seized the sceptre which he was worthy of 
wielding. On the arrival of the new sultan, the 
Egyptian galleys on the Nile were drawn overland 
from above, and launched below the Christian camp ; 
the communication of the French army with Damietta 
was thus cut ojflf; and through precisely the same im- 
prudence, and probably on the very ground on which 
the host of the Fifth Crusade had been enclosed be- 
tween the canal of Ashmoum and the river, Louis 
and his army were now intercepted. In this situa- 
tion, famine and a pestilence, the consequences of un- 
wholesome diet,* soon made frightful ravages in the 

* " You must know that we eat no fish the whole Lent, but eel 
pouts, which is a gluttonous fish, and feeds on dead bodies. From 
this cause, and from the bad air of the country, where it scarcely ever 
rains a drop, the whole army was affected by a shocking disorder, 
which dried up the flesh on our legs to the bone, and our skins be- 
came tanned as black as the ground, or like an old boot that has long 
lain behind a cofier. In addition to this miserable disorder, those 
affected by it had another sore complaint in the mouth from eating 
such fish, that rotted the gums, and caused a most stinking breath. 
Very few escaped death that were thus attacked," &c. — Joinville, p. 
159. "The disorder I spoke of, very soon increased so much in the 
army, that the barbers were forced to cut away very large pieces of 



414 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

Christian camp ; a further advance was impossible ; 
and after a period of calamitous inaction, broken only 
by the assaults of the infidels and some vain over- 
tures of peace, no other resource remained for the en- 
feebled and wretched army of the crusaders than to 
attempt a retreat to Damietta. But this movement 
was the signal of universal disorder and rout; the 
Mussulmans broke into the camp and murdered the 
abandoned sick ; their galleys cut off all the fugitives 
who endeavoured to escape down the river ; the troops 
who marched by land were overwhelmed by the innu- 
merable cavalry of the sultan ; and Louis himself — 
who, though sinking under the same illness as the 
rest of the army, had remained with the rear-guard, 
and discharged all the duties of a devoted commander 
and valiant soldier — fell, in a state of helj^less ex- 
haustion from disease and wounds, into the hands of 
the victorious infidels, [a. d. 1250.] His surviving 
brothers, Charles and Alfonso, Counts of Anjou and 
of Poitiers, together with all his nobility and knight- 
hood, who escaped the first slaughter of the onset, 
shared his fate ; but no mercy was shown by the in- 
fidels to the soldiery and others of inferior condition ; 
and of the Christians of all ranks there fell on this 
fiital occasion, either slain in the field or massacred in 

flesh from the gums, to enable their patients to eat. It was pitiful to 
hear the cries and groans of those on whom this operation was per- 
forming ; they seemed like to the cries of women in labour, and 1 
cannot express the great concern all felt who heard them," p. 162. 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 415 

cold blood, at the lowest computation, upward of 
thirty thousand men.* 

The situation of even the captive king and his 
nobles was for some time extremely critical, and their 
ultimate safety was placed in imminent hazard, by a 
domestic revolution in Egypt, which almost imme- 
diately followed the Moslem victory. The new sul- 
tan, Touran Shah, is accused by the Oriental writers 
of debauchery, favouritism, and cruelty ; but it is only 
certain that his impolitic conduct alienated the afiec- 
tion of the formidable bands whose services, under 
Bibars, had been mainly instrumental in achieving his 
triumph over the Christian invaders. These troops, 
whose renown is so familiar to European ears under 
the designation of Mamelukes, had been organized by 
the late Sultan Nedjmeddin, and had proved them- 
selves the firmest support of his throne. Their ranks 
had been originally filled, as they continued ever after 
to be recruited, by slaves, principally of the hardy 
Turcoman stock, purchased at an early age, and edu- 
cated in the camp ; but their fidelity to the house of 

* Joinville, p. 149-170. Matt. Paris, p. 685, 68G. Makrisi, p. 
248-251. The numbers which perished in this retreat and capture 
of the crusading host, it is, as usual, difficult to estimate. Joinville 
is silent on this point; Makrisi says, one hundred thou.sand — doubt- 
less an exaggeration; but it appears that not one of the crusaders, 
except the garrison of Damietta, escaped; and of the Christian cap- 
tives in Egypt, afterward released, the numbers are declared, with 
uncommon pi-ecision by the same Arabic historian, p. 254, to have 
been only twelve thousand one hundred men, and ten women. 



416 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




St. Louis in ccqjtivili/. 

their founder expired with his death, and they now 
revolted and murdered his son. With Touran Shah 
ended the Curdish dynasty, which, commencing with 
the great Saladin, had reigned in Egypt and Syria for 
eighty years; under sultans who sprang from their 
own ranks, the Mamelukes held independent posses- 
sion of those countries for nearly a century and a half, 
until their nominal subjection to the Turkish power; 
and it has been reserved for our age to witness the 
final extinction of their bands."' 

By Touran Shah, the King of France had at first 
been treated with generosity; and a negotiation for 



* For the origin of tte Mamelukes, see Joinville, p. 156. Mak- 
risi, p. 244, with Du Gauge's note, &e. 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 417 

his ransom and that of his followers was speedily con- 
cluded ; but not until some menaces of torture had 
been ineffectually tried upon the brave spirit of Louis, 
to obtain the surrender of the Christian fortresses in 
the Holy Land. It had, however, been agreed that 
he should yield up Damietta as the price of his own 
liberty, and pay a sum of gold, equal in French 
money to four hundred thousand livres, for the de- 
liverance of his army, when the murder of the sultan 
suspended the fulfilment of the treaty. In the sub- 
sequent confusion, Louis and his nobles narrowly 
escaped death'^' from the fanaticism of some of the 
Moslem chieftains; but more humane or avaricious 
suggestions finally prevailed in their councils, and the 
completion of the treaty was resumed. Finally, Da- 
mietta was surrendered by its French garrison in 
exchange for the persons of the king and his nobles; 
the Templars were reluctantly compelled to make a 
loan from the treasurers in their galleys to complete 



* Joinville himself, when a party of Saracens with drawn swords 
and menacing aspects entered the galley in which he was confined, 
imagined that his last hour was come. " With regard to myself, I 
DO longer thought of any sin or evil I had done, but that I was about 
to receive my death ; in consequence I fell on my knees at the feet 
of one of them, and making the sign of the cross, said, ' Thus died 
St. Agnes,' Sir Guy d'Ebelin, constable of Cyprus, knelt beside me, 
and confessed himself to me, and I gave him such absolution as God 
was pleased to grant me the power of bestowing ; but of all the things 
he had said to me, when I rose up, I could not remember one of 
them," p. 176. 

27 



418 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

the required discharge of the first instahnent of the 
pecuniary ransom ; and Louis, with the sad remnant 
of the proud host which had debarked at Damietta, 
bade adieu to the shores of Egypt.''' 

On their liberation, the greater number of the sur- 
viving nobles, with their followers, gladly availed 
themselves of the plea, that the disasters and suffer- 
ings which they had already undergone were a suf- 
ficient acquittance of their crusading vows ; and, aban- 
doning all idea of further service in the sacred cause, 
they sailed direct for France. But the religious and 
chivalrous scruples of their king were less easily 
satisfied. His devotional feelings, and his sensitive 
conviction of the disgrace with which defeat and cap- 
tivity had sullied his arms,-]* equally impelled him to 
continue his efforts, in the hope of achieving some 
happier enterprise for the redemption of the Holy 
Sepulchre, and the recovery of his fame. He there- 
fore proceeded to Acre, (Ptolemais,) and, after some 
hesitation in his councils, announced a settled purpose 
to remain in Palestine, and to employ whatever trea- 
sures and forces he could still supply or raise in the 



* Joinville, p. 170-184. Matt. Paris, p. 686-689. Makrisi, p. 
251-255. 

f " Rex autem apud Achon tristis remansit et inglorious, jurans in 
cordis amaritudine maxima, quod nunquam in dulcem Franciam sic 
confusus remearet." (But the king, sad and inglorious, remained at 
Acre, swearing in very bitterness of heart, that thus dishonoured he 
would never return to fair France.) Matt. Paris, p. 690. 




St. Louis entering Ptolemais. 



419 



420 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

defence of the Christian garrisons.* During four 
years he persevered in this design, unable, indeed, 
with his exhausted resources and scanty levies, to 
perform any signal action, yet still reluctant to return 
ingloriously to his native realm. As the whole force 
which he succeeded in assembling under his standard, 
during this long period, never amounted to above four 
thousand men, he was prevented from pursuing any 
offensive operations against the infidels; but his trea- 
sures were lavishly expended in refortifying Jaffa, 
Caesarea, and Sidon, and in making great additions to 
the strength of Acre; and his presence and exertions 
not only deserved and obtained the gratitude of the 
Christian chivalry and people of Palestine, but con- 
tributed to suspend for forty years the fall of the last 
bulwarks of the Latin kingdom on the Syrian shores.f 
Among the circumstances which favoured his 
labours, and protected the weakness of the Christians, 

* Among the nobles who had remained with him was the faithful 
Seneschal of Champagne, who had originally maintained his train of 
knights at his own expense, but having lost every thing in Egypt, 
was now compelled to become the stipendiary soldier of the king. 
When, however, his first term of hired service expired, and Louis 
proposed a new pecuniary engagement, "I replied," says Joinville, 
" that I was not come to him to make such a bargain ; but I would 
offer other terms : which were that he should promise never to fly into 
a passion for any thing I should say to him, which was often the case, 
and I engaged that I would keep my temper whenever he refused 
what I should ask." The good saint laughingly assented to these 
quaint and cheap conditions. Joinville, p. 205. 

f Joinville, pas.si'??;, p. 184-224. 



THE SEVEiXTII CUUSADE. 421 

may be numbered tlic dissensions of then^ enemies. 
The usurpation of the Mamelukes, and the struggle of 
their leaders for the possession of the Egyptian throne, 
had encouraged the revolt of Damascus under a sultan, 
the relative of the murdered Khalif of Cairo; a furious 
civil war between the Moslems of Egypt and Syria in- 
terrupted their assaults upon the Christians, and both 
parties sought either to gain the alliance or to avert 
the hostility of the French king. Louis profited by 
their mutual fears and jealousies, to obtain from the 
Mameluke rulers of Egypt the release of all the sur- 
viving Christian captives whom he had left in that 
country, and a remission of the moiety, which was 
still unpaid, of the stipulated ransom for his army. 
lie received a promise even of the cession of Jeru- 
salem itself; and the intelligence of the Moslem dis- 
sensions and of his successful negotiation, again ex- 
cited the hopes of Europe for the recovery of the 
Holy Sepulchre and the re-establishment of the Latin 
kingdom. But these sanguine expectations were 
blighted by the conclusion of peace between the 
Egyptian and Syrian infidels; and their reunited 
forces were immediately turned against the Chris- 
tians. The ravage of the Latin territory by a com- 
bined army of various Moslems, under the Sultan of 
Damascus, and their advance to the gates of Acre, at 
last revealed to Louis the vanity of his fondest aspi- 
rations, and the utter hopelessness of ultimate success. 
The infidels, indeed, retired without attempting the 



422 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

capture of the strong Christian fortresses; and by 
their retreat Louis remained at liberty to withdraw 
without dishonour from the suspended contest. The 
news of his mother's death, by which his kingdom 
was left without a regent, quickened his increasing 
desire to escape from a scene of continued disappoint- 
ment and mortification, and justified the announce- 
ment of his purpose to return to France. The clergy 
and barons themselves of the Latin kingdom, per- 
ceived and acknowledged that his prolonged residence 
could not be attended with any advantage ; and, offer- 
ing him their humble thanks and praise for the great 
good and honour which he had conferred on Pales- 
tine, they gratefully counselled him to think rather 
of ensuring his safe passage to Europe than of con- 
tinuing among them. Louis accepted their advice, 
and adopted a measure so congenial to his altered 
wishes and so necessary to the welfare of his king- 
dom. Embarking at Acre, he reached France after a 
perilous voyage, marked by more than one trial of 
his brave and generous nature, [a. d. 1254.] It was, 
however, but in shame and sorrow that he abandoned 
the cause still dearest to his pious feelings; and he 
closed the Seventh Crusade with the melancholy re- 
flection and self-reproach, which even the conscious- 
ness of his own virtuous intentions could not assuage, 
that he had in vain sacrificed his chivalry and people 
to defeat and destruction ; and that, in exchange for 
the best blood and treasures of his kingdom, he had 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 423 

been able to accomplish nothing either worthy of his 
name, or suitable to the general honour and service 
of Christendom.* 

The residence of St. Louis, however, in Palestine, 
had at least put some check upon the eruption of those 
bitter feuds among the Christians themselves, which 
had ever been the bane of their cause, and which 
broke out anew immediately after the departure of 
their royal leader. Among the most turbulent and 
irreconcilable communities of the Latin State, were 
the colonies of the three maritime Italian republics, 
and the military orders, Li their insolent disdain of 
all control by the local government of the feudal 
kingdom, the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Pisans 
extended their pernicious spirit of commercial and 
political rivalry from Europe to the Syrian shore; 
openly fought with each other in every seaport of 
Palestine for the possession of exclusive privileges and 
quarters, and even violated the sanctity of Christian 
churches by impious and bloody struggles for their 
occupation. "With more flagrant dereliction of duty 
the religious chivalry of the Hospital and Temple 
forgot their vows in the indulgence of their mutual 
hatred, and employed in their fierce rivalry the 
arms which they had sworn to use only in the com- 
mon service of the Cross, [a. d. 1259.] To decide 
their quarrel, the two orders drew out their forces in 

* Joinville, tihi supra. Matt. Paris, p. 698, 720, 737, 766. 



424 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

the field for a general and formal engagement; the 
prowess or numbers of the Hospitallers prevailed; 
and so sanguinary and merciless was the encounter, 
that of all the militia of the Temple then serving in 
the Holy Land, scarcely one knight escaped the car- 
nage. From every commandery of the Temple in 
Europe the most strenuous exertions were made to 
despatch its effective members to Palestine, both for 
the purpose of replenishing the vacant posts of their 
slaughtered brotherhood, and of inflicting a signal 
vengeance upon the Hospitallers ; and nothing short 
of a war of extirmination was meditated between the 
two orders; when their deadly feud was suddenly 
smothered under the overwhelming violence of a new 
tempest of Mussulman invasion, which threatened to 
bury them, with the whole Christian State, under a 
common ruin, and awoke them to the duty or neces- 
sity of uniting their exhausted forces against the 
general enemy.* 

After a revolutionary period of disorder and blood- 
shed, Bibars, styled also Al Bonducdari or Bondocdar, 
the same Mameluke chieftain who had distinguished 
his ability in the defence of Egypt against St. Louis, 



* Matthew Paris, p. 846, who describes in strong terms the events 
of the unnatural warfare between these devoted champions of the 
Cross, and the purpose with which the Templars in Europe hastened 
to the Holy Land, " propter ultionem horribilem hostiliter in Hospi- 
talarios retribuendam," (for the purpose of taking a horrible revenge 
Dn the Hospitallers.) 



THE SEVENTH CRUSAdE. 425 

was raised by the suffrages of his fellow-soldiers to the 
throne of that kingdom; [a. d.1263;] and had now 
commenced an enterprising reign of seventeen years, 
which proved nearly fatal to the remains of the Chris- 
tian power in Palestine. No sooner had he consoli- 
dated his authority in Egypt, than he carried his arms 
into Syria, reduced the Mussulman states in that 
country into subjection, and poured the united forces 
of the infidels into the Christian territories. In the 
open field, the numbers of the invaders rendered all 
resistance to their ravages hopeless ; but the few and 
scanty garrisons of the Latins made a gallant and 
desperate defence; the military orders gave many a 
noble example of heroism ; and, by that singular ad- 
mixture of religious constancy with every fierce and 
unholy passion which distinguished their times and 
their associations, the same men who had so lately 
stained their swords with the blood of their Christian 
brethren, now vied with each other only in the gene- 
rous devotion of their lives to the common cause, and 
in the inflexible preference of martyrdom to apostacy. 
[a. d. 1265.] Upon one occasion, the last of ninety 
Hospitallers who had defended Azotus, died in the 
breach; on another, the prior of the Templars with 
his companions, who had been reduced to extremity, 
and surrendered Saphoury on a capitulation which 
Bibars treacherously violated, were offered the alter- 
native of a cruel death or instant conversion to Islam- 
ism, [a. d. 12G6,] and unanimously sealed the sin- 



426 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

cerity of their faith with their blood. But all the 
heroic efforts of the two orders failed to arrest the 
progress of the infidels, or to awaken the timely 
sympathy and succour of Europe. In the course of a 
few years, not only the inland castles of the two 
orders, but Csesarea, Laodicea, Jaffa, and many mari- 
time fortresses successively fell before the Mameluke 
arms; and the capture of Antioch, and the extinction 
of its Latin principality, which throughout the vicissi- 
tudes of the Crusades had hitherto preserved an 
obscure and uninteresting existence, completed the 
triumph of Bondocdar. 

The fall of Antioch, which was basely surren- 
dered without resistance, was attended by the 
massacre of ten or even forty thousand Christians; 
above one hundred thousand more were sold into 
slavery; [a. d. 1268;] and the once proud capi- 
tal of Syria was abandoned to desolation and soli- 
tude.* Acre was preserved from the same fate only 
through the succour of the King of Cyprus, and the 
destruction of the Egyptian navy by the elements; 

* "Eo anno/' says Kislianger, the continuator of the Clironide of 
St. Allan's, ''Soldanus Babylonias vastata, Armenia, Antiocham, 
imam de famosioribus orbis civitatibus abstulit Christianis, et tam 
viris quam mulieribus interemptis, in solitudinem ipsam reduxit." 
(In that year the Sultan of Babylonia, having laid waste Armenia, 
took Antioch, one of the most famous cities on the globe, from the 
Christians, and both the men and women being slain, he reduced it 
to a solitude.) p. 857. It may, however, be doubted whether its 
iotal depopulation is to be understood literally. 



THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 427 

and at this juncture the fall of that last Chris- 
tian bulwark on the Syrian coast was suspended for 
twenty years by an expiring effort of the crusading 
spirit.* 

* Sanutus, Secret. Fidel. Crucis, lib. iii. pars. xii. c. 6, ad part xiv. 
c. 3. De Guignes, Mist. Gen. des Huns, &e., lib. xxi.,j>assim. 



428 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




SECTION V. 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 




"^'HE appalling intelligence of the 
dreadful catastrophe which had 
extinguished the Christian State 
of Antioch, roused the Papal 
Court from a long and selfish 
apathy to the affairs of the 
East; and the unabated zeal 
with which Louis IX. of France 
had already contemplated a re- 
newal of his pious services on 
the imaginary cause of Heaven, 
was now quickened by the approbation of Clement IV. 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 429 

The piety of Louis was sincere and ardent, and in 
another age it would, doubtless, have taken a more 
rational direction, but in the thirteenth century it 
was the mere embodiment of a passion for the de- 
livery of the Holy Sepulchre, which neither his past 
experience nor his sufferings, great as the latter had 
been, could eradicate; and after thirteen years spent 
at home in the wise and temperate exercise of his 
regal functions, he resolved again to devote his men- 
tal energies and his material resources to the organi- 
zation of a new Crusade. Three years were consumed 
in preparations for this final effort to recover Pales- 
tine, and on the 4th of July, 1270, he set sail with 
his fleet from the port of Aigues-Mortes, and in a few 
days reached the roadstead of Cagliari in Sardinia, 
where he anchored, and called a council of war of his 
barons and counts to deliberate on the course it was 
most proper to pursue ; when it was determined by a 
majority, and in obedience to the king's secret wishes, 
to attempt the reduction of Tunis, the king of which 
country and his people Louis hoped to convert to 
Christianity. The circumstances which led to this 
extraordinary resolution are but imperfectly known, 
though they may probably be as safely referred to the 
intensely devotional temperament of the monarch, as 
to the interested representations of his brother, Charles 
of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, whose subjects 
were molested by the piratical practices of the Moors ; 
but however this may be, the desire to visit Tunis, 



430 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

and to reclaim its inhabitants had taken so deep a 
hold on the mind of Louis, that he was heard to say, 
before he left France, that he would willingly spend 
the rest of his life in a dungeon, away from the light 
of the sun, if, by such a sacrifice, he could accomplish 
this cherished object.'^* Many of his wisest advisers 
tried to turn him from this fatal determination, but in 
vain; and the good but mistaken king landed his 
army on the Tunisian territory on the 24th of July, 
and encamped it on the site of the ancient Carthage. 
The Moors did not oppose its debarkation, but on the 
approach of the fleet fled in dismay, and the Saracenic 
prince, for whose special benefit this detour had been 
made, treated the Frankish monarch as an enemy, 
and threatened, at the head of a hundred thousand 
men, to drive him into the sea. No encounter, how- 
ever, took place between the hostile troops, for, 
beside that Louis avoided one as incompatible with 
the spiritual design of his mission, the Moors had no 
wish to measure swords with the Christian chivalry; 
but they harassed the Christian army by desultory 
attacks on outposts and stragglers, and by intercept- 
ing their supplies ; and these distractions, aided by the 
heat of the climate, the want of water, and the neces- 
sity of feeding on salted provisions under an African 
sky, caused a pestilence to break out in the crusading 
camp, which, in a few short weeks, nearly decimated 

* Micliaud, iii. p. 35. 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 431 

the hapless army. Night and day the Frankish 
soldiers were under arms, but the enemy was fugi- 
tive, and when sought was nowhere to be found. 
Meanwhile death sped his way through the ranks. 
Fatigue, famine, and disease did their work but too 
surely. The dead were so numerous that it was 
found impossible to bury them. The ditches of the 
camp were filled with carcasses thrown in by the 
heap. The stench emitted corrupted the air, and de- 
spair and misery overwhelmed the unhappy cru- 
saders. The Count de Vendome, the Count de la 
Marche, Gaultier, de Nemours, the Lords de Mont- 
morency, de Pienne, de Bressac, and many others of 
the highest condition, fell before the fatal epidemic ; 
and when the Duke de Nevers, the king's son, who 
had been born at Damietta during the captivity of 
his father, died, the hero and the monarch yielded to 
the man and the father, and he wept bitterly. At 
length the king himself fell ill; the rude medical art 
of the age did its best for him, but in vain — the hand 
of fate was on Louis of France — and he expired tran- 
quilly in his camp, on the shores of the ancient 
Numidia, on the afternoon of the 25th of August, 
1270. — Let us now return to the progress of the 
Eighth and last Crusade. 

In the defence of a land and a cause which, during 
two centuries, had continually exercised the valour,' 
and prodigally wasted the blood of the chivalry of 
Christendom, the last successful exploits of heroism 



432 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 




Ediicnd I I ) Liifflimd 



were reserved for an English prince, the descendant 
of those ilhistrious houses of Normandy and Planta- 
genet, whose prowess had so often been signalized on 
the same ensanguined field. Prince Edward, the 
future monarch of England, accompanied by his faith- 
ful consort Eleanor, and attended by his kinsman 
Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, four other 
earls, four barons, and a gallant but slender train of 
knights and soldiers, which did not exceed one thou- 
sand men, had joined the French army in Africa be- 
fore the death of Louis IX. ; and the abandonment of 
the Crusade by their allies, which followed that event, 
might have absolved the small English force from the 
prosecution of their vows. But their valiant and 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 433 

magnanimous leader swore, that though every other 
follower should desert him, he would still proceed to 
Palestine, attended only by his groom ;* his spirit was 
emulated by every English heart ; and after refresh- 
ing their strength during the winter in Sicily, he 
sailed in the spring with his gallant band to Acre.-j- 

The arrival of Edward in that port once more re-' 
kindled the hopes of the desponding Latins ; and the 
long memory of the prowess of Coeur de Lion had still 
retained sufficient influence in the East to appal the 
spirit of the Moslems at the intelligence, that another 
hero of the lion-hearted race approached to uphold 
the banner of the Cross. The Sultan Bondocdar, who 
had carried his ravages to the gates of Acre, imme- 
diately retired in discouragement at the report. J The 
broken remains of the Latin chivalry of Palestine 
eagerly gathered around the standard of Plantagenet ; 
and though the total force which the Christian State 

* "Juravit solito Juramento per sanguinem Domini, inquiens; 
Quamvis omnes commilitiones et patriotae mei me deserant, ego 
tamen, Fowino custode palufridi mei, (sic enim vocabatur curator 
equi sui,) intrabo Tholomaidam." (He swore by his usual oatb, the 
blood of the Lord, saying: — "Although all my fellow-soldiers and 
compatriots desert me, yet I, with Fowin, the keeper of my palfrey, 
will enter Tolamais.") Kishanger, Contin., Matt. Paris, p. 859. 

f Rishanger, p. 858, 859. Matt. Westminster, (Ed. Francofurti, 
A. D. 1601,) p. 400. Chronica de 3IatIros, (apud Gale et Fell, vol. 
iii.,) p. 241. Chronicon Thomse Wikes, p. 94. Chronica Walteri 
Hemingford, p. 590. (Both in Gale, vol ii.) 

J Both Rishanger and Matthew of Westminster (ubi supra) de 
clare that, but for the opportune arrival of Edward, Acre was to have 
been surrendered to the sultan within four days. 

28 



434 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

could muster, including his English followers, did not 
exceed seven thousand men, Edward boldly mar- 
shalled this scanty army for offensive hostilities 
against the infidels. Advancing from Acre, his 
achievements justified the general expectation both 
of his enterprising courage and of his military skill. 
His first exploit, the surprise and defeat of a large 
body of the Mussulman forces in the field, was suc- 
ceeded by the assault of Nazareth ; and in the dread- 
ful slaughter which preceded and followed the capture 
of that city, he equally emulated the chivalric valour 
and the fanatical cruelty of the earlier champions of 
the Cross.* But the reduction of Nazareth closed his 
brief career of victory ; his English followers fell rapid 
victims to the Syrian climate, and the hero himself 
was already stretched on a sick couch, when he nar- 
rowly escaped death from the poisoned dagger of an 
assassin. Whether the villian was the mere hired 
emissary of a Mussulman emir, or one of the few sur- 
vivors of that fanatical sect of the mountain chief, 
which the Moguls were supposed to have extirpated,^ 

* In liis first surprise of the infidels, Edward "invenit Sarraccnos 
et usores eorunl cum parvulis suis in lecto: quos omnes," coolly con- 
tinues the chronicler of Melrose, " ut hostes Christians fidei occidlt 
in ore gladii," — (he found the Saracens with their wives and little 
ones in bed — all of whom, as enemies of the Christian faith, he slew 
with the point of the sword.) P. 242. 

f The destruction of the Syrian assassins by the Tartars is noticed 
by Matt. Paris, p. 821, (^ad an. 1257.) ''Circulo ejusdem anni, 
Tartar! detestabiles Assassinos detestabiliores, &c., destruxerunt," — 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 



435 




Attempt to a.sn.issinale Edward. 

is uncertain; but he easily obtained a private 
audience of Edward under pretence of a confidential 
mission ; and, while the prince was reading his cre- 
dentials, he drew a hidden poniard, and aimed a blow 
at his intended victim. The attack was so unex- 
pected, that Edward received several wounds before 
he recovered from the surprise, when, vigorously 
strus^ciinof with the assassin, he felled him to the 
floor, and instantly despatched him with his own 



(In the course of this year the detestable Tartars destroyed the more 
detestable assassins.) In the first part of a tedious Dissertation on the 
Assassins, by M. Falconet, read before the French Academy of In- 
scriptions, and of which a translation is printed in Johnes's Joinville, 
(vol. ii. p. 287-328,) an attempt is made to prove that Paris was in 
error ; that it was only the assassins of Persia, a kindred and more 
numerous sect, which the Tartars destroyed ; and that those of Syria, 
according to Abulfeda, were extirpated by the Mamelukes about 
A. D. 1280. 



436 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

dagger. As the weapon had been poisoned, the life 
of the prince was for some time in imminent danger; 
but a leech in his service undertook to cut away the 
infected flesh from his wounds, and the operation was 
successful.* 

After his own restoration to health, the wasting 
effects of disease among his followers ; the total inade- 
quacy of his remaining force to any further enterprise 
of importance; the failure of other Christian princes 
to despatch their promised succours to his aid; and 
intelligence from England of his father's dangerous 
illness and anxiety for his return rj" all conspired in 
inducing Edward to listen to overtures for peace, 
which were extorted from the Sultan of Egypt, not 
less by the experience of his prowess than by some 
new troubles which had broken out in the Mussulman 

* Rishanger, p. 859, 8G0. Matt. West. p. 401. Cliron. de Mailros, 
(which suddenly breaks off in the midst of its tale of the attempt to 
assassinate Edward,) p. 241, ad Jin. Wikes, p. 96-98. Heming- 
ford, p. 590-592. 

Not one of these writers, who were contemporary, or nearly so, 
with the event, knew any thing of that beautiful fiction, the creation 
of a much later age, which ascribes the recovery of Edward to the 
affectionate devotion of his consort Eleanor in sucking the venom 
from his wounds. Hemingford, whose account is very circum- 
stantial, and has principally been followed in the text, notices the 
presence of Eleanor, the demand of the leech that she should be re- 
moved from the chamber of her lord before the operation was per- 
formed for his cure, and the gentle violence which was necessary to 
withdraw her from the scene. P. 591. 

f The letter from Henry III., pressing his son's return, may be 
seen in Rymer, (Ed. by royal command, 1816,) vol. i. p. 487. 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 437 

States. The mutual necessities of the sultan and of 
the English prince, therefore, produced the conclusion 
of a truce between the infidels and the Christians in 
Palestine for ten years; and after a residence of four- 
teen months in the Holy Land, and the accomplish- 
ment of a seasonable treaty, which had alone arrested 
the progress of the Mameluke arms and prolonged, for 
another brief period, the precarious existence of the 
Latin State, Edward bade adieu to the Syrian shores, 
and sailed, with his few surviving followers, for his 
native land.* [A. d. 1272.] 

After the departure of the English prince, and 
while the remaining Christian possessions on the coast 
of Palestine were left in the peace which he had won, 
some last abortive efforts were used to interest Europe 
in their preservation. Pope Gregory X., who was re- 
siding in Palestine when he was surprised with the 
news of his elevation to the tiara, [a. d. 1274,] and who 
had been a sorrowing witness to the helpless con- 
dition of the Latin State, made an earnest endeavour, 
immediately after his arrival in Europe, to arouse the 
sovereigns and nations of Christendom to the prepa- 
ration of a new Crusade. But the solitary example, 
given by one pontiff, of a deep sincerity in the cause, 
only served to prove the utter extinction of the cru- 
sading spirit. Notwithstanding his labours, seconded 
by the authority of a general council of the church 

* Matt. West, p. 402. Wikes, p. 99. Hemiogford; p. 592. 



438 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

which he assembled at Lyon, he could only obtain 
hollow promises of devotion to the service of the 
Cross from those princes who desired to perpetuate 
his favour, and who, after his death, evaded the fulfil- 
ment of their reluctant vows. Meanwhile, however, 
the Christians in Palestine, during eight years, were 
permitted, by the good faith or distraction of the Mus- 
sulman councils, to enjoy unmolested a peaceful re- 
spite of their fate ; and that interval was filled only 
by the struggle of royal pretensions in the expiring 
Latin kingdom. Since the death of the Emperor 
Frederic IL, the baseless throne of Jerusalem had 
found a claimant in Hugh de Lusignan, King of 
Cyprus, who, as lineally descended from Alice, 
daughter of Queen Isabella, was, in fact, the next 
heir, after failure of issue by the marriage of Frederic 
and lolanta de Brienne. His claims were opposed by 
the partisans of Charles of Anjou, King of the Sicilies; 
that wholesale speculator in diadems, who, not con- 
tented with the iniquitous acquisition of his Italian 
realms, and the splendid dream of dismembering the 
Greek Empire, extended his grasp to the ideal crown 
of Palestine. He rested his claim upon the double 
pretensions of a papal title to all the forfeited dignities 
of the imperial house of Hohenstauffen, and of a bar- 
gain with Mary of Antioch; whose rights, although 
she was descended only from a younger sister of Alice, 
he had eagerly purchased. But the prior title of the 
house of Cyprus was more generally recognisod in 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 439 

Palestine; the coronation of Hugh had been cele- 
brated at Tyre ; and the last idle pageant of regal 
state in Palestine was exhibited by the race of Lu- 
signan.''' 

At length the final storm of Mussulman war broke 
upon the phantom king and his subjects. It was 
twice provoked by the aggressions of the Latins them- 
selves, in plundering the peaceable Moslem traders, 
who resorted, on the faith of treaties, to the Christian 
marts on the Syrian coast. After a vain attempt to 
obtain redress for the first of these violations of inter- 
national law, Keladun, the reigning sultan of Egypt 
and Syria, revenged the infraction of the existing ten 
years' truce by a renewal of hostilities with over- 
whelming force ; yearly repeated his ravages of the 
Christian territory ; and at length, tearing the city 
and county of Tripoli — the last surviving great fief of 
the Latin kingdom — from its dilapidated crown, dic- 
tated the terms of peace to its powerless sovereign. 
[a. d. 1289.] The example of this punishment, and 

* Mr. Hallam, following Giannone, has fallen into some inaccuracy, 
on no very important matter, indeed, in stating (^Middle Ages, vol. i. 
p. 371, 8vo. ed.) Mary of Antiocli to have been the legitimate heiress 
of Jerusalem in 1272, while the royal line of Cyprus, descended 
from Alice, eldest sister of her naother, Melesinda, had, of course, 
a better title. Until that race should be extinct, the house of Anjou 
could only rest their pretensions on the lapsed rights of Frederic II. ; 
but these had expired with his posterity; and, in short, as observed 
by Mr. Mills, (^Crusades, vol. ii, p. 269,) "the House of Anjou had no 
juster claim to the throne of Jerusalem, than they had to the throne 
of the Two Sicilies." 



440 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

the authority of a feeble government, were insufficient 
to prevent a repetition, two years later, on the part 
of the lawless inhabitants of Acre, of similar outrages 
upon the property and persons of the Mussulman 
merchants; and the Sultan Kliatil, the son of Ke- 
ladun, was provoked, by a new denial of justice, to 
utter and enforce a tremendous vow of extermination 
against the perfidious Franks. At the head of an im- 
mense army of two hundred thousand men, the Ma- 
meluke prince entered Palestine, swept the weaker 
Christian garrisons before him, and encamped under 
the towers of Acre. [A. d. 1291.] That city, which, 
since the fall of Jerusalem, had been for a century the 
capital of the Latin kingdom, was now become the 
last refuge of the Christian population of Palestine. 
Its defences were strong, its inhabitants numerous; 
but any state of society more vicious, disorderly, and 
helpless than its condition, can scarcely be imagined. 
Within its walls were crowded a promiscuous multi- 
tude, of every European nation, all equally disclaim- 
ing obedience to a general government, and enjoying 
impunity for every crime under the nominal jurisdic- 
tion of independent tribunals. Of these there were 
no less than seventeen ; in which the papal legate, the 
king of Jerusalem, the despoiled great feudatories of 
his realm, the three military orders, the colonies of the 
maritime Italian republics, and the representatives of 
the princes of the West, all arrogated sovereign rights, 
and all abused them by the venal protection of of- 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 441 

fenders. When, therefore, the devoted city was in- 
vested by the infidels, we need not wonder that, amid 
the common danger, her councils were without concert, 
and that, with an immense population, the vast circuit 
of her walls was inadequately manned. All the 
wretched inhabitants who could find such opportunites 
of escape, thronged on board the numerous vessels in 
the harbour, which set sail for Europe ; and the last 
defence of Acre was abandoned to about twelve thou- 
sand men, for the most part the soldiery of the three 
military orders."^' 

From that gallant chivalry, the Moslems encoun- 
tered a resistance worthy of its ancient renown and 
of the extremity of the cause for which its triple fra- 
ternity had sworn to die. But the whole force of the 
Mameluke empire, in its yet youthful vigour, had been 
collected for their destruction. During thirty-three 
days, the beseigers incessantly plied a long train of 
balistic and battering engines of huge dimensions and 
prodigious power against the defences of the city; 
various parts of its double wall were beaten down or 
undermined; and at length the fall of a principal 
work, of which the fatal importance is expressed in 
the original relations of the siege by its title of ^' the 
Cursed Tower," opened a yawning breach into the 
heart of the place. At this awful crisis, the recreant 
Lusignan, who wore the titular crown of Jerusalem, 

* De Gruignes, lib. xxi. Sanutus, lib. iii., pars, xiii., c. 20. Gio- 
vanni Villani, {in Script. Rcr. Ital., vol. xiii.,) lib. vii. c. 144. 



442 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

basely abandoned his duty, and proved himself desti- 
tute of the only qualities which might have conferred 
lustre upon his ideal dignity. Secretly withdrawing 
in the night from his post, he seized a few vessels in 
the port, and sailed away with his followers to Cyprus. 
Even his cowardly flight could not shake the con- 
stancy of the Teutonic knights whom he had deserted 
in the Cursed Tower, and who continued to guard its 
ruins. But, with the following dawn, their post was 
attacked by the infidels in immense force ; several 
times were the assailants repulsed with dreadful car- 
nage, and as often were the slain replaced by fresh 
bands of the Moslems. At length, after most of the 
German cavaliers had fallen in the breach, the infidels, 
in overpowering numbers, forced a passage over their 
lifeless bodies ; a torrent of assailants pouring into the 
place swept its few surviving defenders before them ; 
and Acre was irretrievably lost. Bursting through 
the city, the savage victors pursued to the strand the 
unarmed and fleeing population, who had wildly 
sought a means of escape, which was denied not less 
by the fury of the elements than by the want of suf- 
ficient shipping. By the relentless cruelty of their 
pursuers, the sands and the waves were dyed with the 
blood of the fugitives ; all who survived the first hor- 
rid massacre were doomed to a hopeless slaverj^ ; and 
the last catastrophe of the Crusades cost life or liberty 
to sixty thousand Christians. 

Even in the fatal hour in which Acre fell, the he- 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 443 

roes of the Hospital and Temple preserved and dis- 
played their unconquerable spirit. Led by their 
grand-master, the knights of St. John sallied from the 
devoted city, carried havoc into the heart of the in- 
fidel leaguer, and when, overpowered by numbers, all 
but seven of their order, with a few followers, had 
been left on the field, this gallant remnant fought 
their way to the coast, and efiected an embarkation. 
Meanwhile, for three days after the fall of the city, 
the Templars continued to defend their monastic for- 
tress within its Avails. Their valiant grand-master, 
Pierre de Beaujeu, whose military skill and personal 
heroism had been conspicuous throughout the siege, 
was killed by a poisoned arrow ; but the obstinate re- 
sistance of his brethren obtained from the sultan the 
promise of a free and honourable retreat. When the 
Red Cross-Knights issued from their fortress on the 
faith of this assurance, they were assailed by the law- 
less insults of the Mussulman hosts ; they impatiently 
renewed the contest ; and most of their number were 
slain on the spot. The few who escaped forced a pas- 
sage with their swords through the Mameluke lines, 
fled into the interior country, and even there resumed 
the war, until they were ultimately driven again to 
the coast, and efiected their escape by sea to Cyprus. 
Theirs was the last effort for the defence of Palestine ; 
the Christian population of the few maritime towns 
which had yet been retained fled to Cyprus, or sub- 
mitted their necks, without a struggle, to the Moslem 



444 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

yoke; and, after a bloody contest of two hundred 
years, the possession of the Holy Land was finally 
abandoned to the enemies of the Cross.* 

The fall of Acre closes the annals of the Crusades. 
But the mere loss of that last possession of the Latins 
on the Syrian shore would not have put a term to the 
hopes and efforts of Christendom for the recovery of 
the Holy Sepulchre, if the spirit itself which prompted 
every preceding enterprise for the same object had not 
already expired. A century earlier, the capture of 
Jerusalem by Saladin had sufficed to fill all Europe 
with grief and horror, and had impressed the three 
greatest monarchs of the aore with the conviction that 
the demands of religion and honour rendered it equally 
imperative upon them personally to revenge the dis- 
grace of Christendom, and to chastise the insolence of 
the enemies of God. At a still later epoch, even the 
fall of a remote dependency of the Latin kingdom of 
Jerusalem had awakened the most intense anxiety 
and alarm in Europe for the safety of the Holy Se- 
pulchre ; and the catastrophe of Edessa had attracted 
the sovereigns and national chivalry of France and 
Germany to the plains of Asia. At every cry for 
succour from the Christians in Palestine, until the 
fatal issue of the Fifth Crusade, myriads of warlike 
and fanatical volunteers, of the noblest as well the 
meanest blood of Europe, had eagerly responded to 

* Sanutus, lib. iii. pars. xii. c. 21-23. De Guignes and G. Villani, 
uhi supra. 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 445 

the call ; and their devotion to the cause was much 
more frequently chilled and diverted from its support 
by the tortuous and sordid policy of the papal see, 
than by any lack of sincerity or change of purpose in 
themselves. Yet, after the fall of Acre, no exhorta- 
tions which succeeding pontiffs strenuously repeated 
for fifty years, could rouse the princes and people of 
the West to any earnest design for the revival of the 
Crusades.* Nor was it that Europe had become less 
martial or restless in the fourteenth than it had been 
in the twelfth century. Warfare still constituted the 
only serious occupation of her princes and nobles — its 
pursuit the only path of honourable distinction, its 
image almost their only pastime; and the flame of 
chivalry — which we have elsewhere characterized, 
after a great writer, as at once a cause and conse- 
quence of the Crusades — never burned so brightly as 
in the age which immediately succeeded the extinction 
of those enterprises. 

The cessation of the Crusades was assuredly, then, 
not produced by any abatement of the love of arms, 
or of the thirst of glory in the chivalry of Europe. 
But the union with these martial qualities of that 
fanatical enthusiasm which inspired the Christian 

* An enumeration of these abortive eiforts of the popes to rekindle 
the enthusiasm of Europe would be superfluous in this place, but 
may be found in Mr. Mill's History of the Crusades, vol. ii. ch. vii. 
— a work to which we take this last occasion of expressing our great 
obligations. 



446 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

warriors of the eleventh century, had been slowly dis- 
solved ; and the abandonment of Palestine to the un- 
disturbed possession of the Moslems is clearly to be 
traced to the gradual but total exhaustion in the 
European mind of the same superstitious phrensy 
which, pervading every rank of society, had wrought 
such stupendous efforts for the possession of the Holy 
Land. The long duration of this wild passion, indeed, 
is far more astonishing than its final decay ; and, in- 
stead of being a subject of surprise that it at length 
expired, it may rather provoke our wonder that so 
strange an enthusiasm should so tenaciously have sur- 
vived all experience of disappointment and calamity. 
In the thirteenth century, however — a full generation 
before the fall of Acre — we begin clearly to discern the 
decline of the crusading spirit in the evidence both of 
historical and poetical literature ; and when the pious 
follower of St. Louis, and faithful chronicler of his 
deeds, refused to accompany him in his second ex- 
pedition,* — when the religious obligation of wresting 

* " The King of France and the King of Navarre pressed me 
strongly to put on the Cross, and undertake a pilgrimage with them; 
but I replied, that when I was before beyond sea, on the service of 
Grod, the officers of the King of France had so grievously oppressed 
ray people that they were in a state of poverty, insomuch that we 
should have great difficulty to recover ourselves; and that I saw 
clearly, were I to undertake another Croisade, it would be the total 
ruin of my people. I have heard many say since, that those who 
had advised him to this Croisade had been guilty of a great crime, 
and had sinned deadly." Joinville, (Johnes's Edition,) vol. i. p. 
241. 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 447 

the sepulchre of Christ from the hands of the infidels 
became the subject of bold and jocular denial in a 
popular poem/' — we may feel assured that the noble 
and the minstrel already spoke the altered sentiments 
of their times. 

The causes to which this extinction of fanatical zeal 
in Europe may be referred are obvious, and have often 
been exposed. Among them, the most immediate was, 
assuredly, a growing conviction of the hopelessness of 
success. After the signal and tremendous failure of 
the Fifth Crusade in Egypt, it may be doubted 
whether any mighty armament could ever again have 
been directed to the same scene, if the personal cha- 
racter and influential example of St. Louis, rather 
than the spontaneous ardour of his nobles, had not 
produced his two calamitous expeditions. In the in- 
termediate enterprise of the Emperor Frederic II., his 
tardy if not reluctant voyage to the Holy Land, as 
well as the whole tenor of his conduct respecting the 
affairs of his Eastern kingdom, was evidently induced 



* In the Fahliaux of Le Grand d'Aussy, (vol. ii. p. 163,) trans- 
lated in the kindred work of Way, (vol. ii. p. 227,) is preserved a very 
curious specimen by Rutuboeuf, a French rhymer of the age of St. 
Louis, in ■which a crusader and non-crusader are made to discuss the 
duty of assuming the Cross. Throughout this dialogue, under pre- 
text of rebuking the levity of the non-crusader, it is evident that the 
sly minstrel intended to ridicule the expiring folly of his times ; nor 
would it be easy, in more serious terms, to offer a better exposure of 
the practical evils which the Crusades had inflicted upon their vo- 
taries, than is presented in this lively satire. 



448 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

much more by political than religious considerations ; 
and the efforts of our two English princes, Richard of 
Cornwall, and his nephew Edward, if inspired by a 
more generous motive of glory or devotion, were un- 
sustained examples of individual heroism, w^hich 
served only to prove that their spirit was no longer 
supported by the popular enthusiasm and hopes of 
their age. None of those leaders were followed by 
the immense and various array of the Western 
nations, which had thronged around the consecrated 
banners of their precursors in the first five Crusades ; 
the defence of Palestine itself was abandoned almost 
entirely to the military orders ; and perhaps it was 
only the institution of those martial and religious 
fraternities, and the revolutions and consequent weak- 
ness of the Mohammedan States, which protracted 
the struggle through the last seventy years of its 
duration. 

But, beyond all question, the primary cause which 
both defeated the object of the Crusades, and 
awakened Christendom from its long dream of fa- 
natical madness, was the conduct of the papal see. 
Sincere as Pope Urban II. and some of his successors 
undoubtedly were in the promotion of these under- 
takings, the temptation of diverting the general en- 
thusiasm to the profit of its own spiritual and tem- 
poral power soon became too strong to be resisted by 
the selfish ambition and cupidity of the court of 
Rome. Accordingly, the service of the Cross became 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 449 

the frequent pretence for pecuniary exactions to fill 
the papal coffers f next, crusaders were allowed and 
even encouraged to commute their vows for money ; 
and, finally, the same spiritual indulgences, or pardons 
for sin, which had been the great inducement to 
persons of all ranks to engage in the earlier Crusades,f 
were openly and shamelessly sold. Moreover, by an' 
easy enlargement of the crusading principle, the 
sacred duty and merit of combating the infidel foes 
of God was first extended to the extirpation of heresy 
among Christians by the sword ; and this doctrine re- 
quired to be stretched but a point further, to reach all 
the temporal enemies of the church, or, in other words? 
every political opponent of the reigning pontifil 

Innocent III. was the first of the popes who applied 
the religious enthusiasm of Europe to this double 
object of taxation and persecution. The Crusade 
which he directed against the Albigenses, was the 
earliest diversion of the martial fanaticism of the 
Middle Ages from its original object; and the in- 
dulgences which he lavished upon all who assumed 

* Sufficient examples of this fact, in the case of England, 
have already heen cited in the present chapter from Matthew Paris, 
p. 339, 461, 463, &c. ; nor can it be doubted that the same conduct 
was pursued in other parts of Europe. 

f The promise of spiritual indulgences and pardons is expressly 
mentioned by Villehardouin as among the primary motives of the 
warriors who engaged in the Fourth Crusade. Et mult $en croisi- 
erent, porcr, que li pardons ere si gran. Par. No. 1. (And many 
took the Cross because that the pardons were so great.) 

29 



450 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 

the Cross in that atrocious warfare, were more ex- 
tensive than any which had been promised for the de- 
liverance of the Holy Sepulchre. The conduct of In- 
nocent in converting the Saladine tithe, which had 
been first levied by general and voluntary consent 
throughout Europe, into a compulsory tax upon the 
clergy, was, indeed, more legitimate in its purpose. 
But though, as we formerly observed, that loftiness of 
spirit which characterized that celebrated pontiff may 
redeem his memory from any suspicion of mean or 
sordid motives, the example which he thus set had 
very important results under his successors, not only 
in disgusting the ecclesiastical orders with the prosecu- 
tion of holy wars, which were made the pretext of 
plundering their revenues, but also in encouraging 
that spirit of resistance to the papal exactions which 
may be numbered among the remote causes of the 
Reformation.''' 

It can scarcely be necessary, in this j)lace, to remind 
the reader of the more flagrant abuses of the cru- 
sading principle which w^ere so frequently committed 
by the successors of Innocent III. During a period 
of forty years, every war in which they pursued their 

* This is evidently the opinion of a writer of great research and 
celebrity, though he shrinks from stating it broadly : Peut-on en con- 
clure que les Croisades soient la cause de la guerre des Hussites et de 
la Reformation de Luther ? (May we not then conclude that the 
Crusades were the cause of the war of the Hussites, and of the 
Reformation of Luther ?) Heeren, Essai sur Vlnfiuence des Croi- 
sades, Paris, 1808, p. 176. 



THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 451 

unrelenting hostility against the imperial house of 
HohenstaufFen, from the first excommunication of 
Frederic II. until the fall of his grandson Conradin, 
was audaciously invested with the title of a Crusade, 
and its supporters were rewarded with the same privi- 
leges as the Christian warriors in Palestine. One of 
these pontiffs, Clement IV., during the contest be- 
tween Charles of Anjou and Manfred for the crown 
of the Sicilies, even prevented large bodies of cru- 
saders from proceeding to the Holy Land, by inviting 
them, with the promise of equal indulgences, to ex- 
change the perilous fulfilment of their vows in the 
East, for the lighter service of attacking his political 
enemy in Italy. 

It would be a waste of words to enlarge upon the 
serious injury sustained by the Christian cause in 
Palestine through these abuses, or to describe the 
ridicule and scandal which were thrown upon the 
crusading principle itself, by its prostitution to pur- 
poses too grossly temporal long to delude even the 
blindest superstition. Nor were the shameless ex- 
pedients less palpable by which the papal court and 
its agents, in the same age, frequently impeded the 
religious enteriDrises, and disappointed the zeal of 
society, in order to embezzle the immense sums which 
were collected for the ostensible service of the Cross. 
Of the extent of these frauds we have cited abundant 
evidence, even from the monastic annalists of our own 
country j and their effects could not fail to extinguish 



452 



THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. 



in disgust the last fitful gleams of the crusading 
fanaticism, since such fruitless exactions fell less 
severely on the jDOor and ignorant commonalty, than 
on those ecclesiastical and noble orders who, by their 
riches and intelligence, were more interested, and 
better qualified to expose and resent the dishonest 
artifices of the papal policy.* 

* The popular belief, -which held that pilgrimages to various 
shrines of Europe were scarcely less efl&cacious than the more 
arduous journey to the Holy Land, has sometimes been numbered 
among the causes of the decline of the crusading spirit ; but it seems 
to have been rather a consequence of the impossibility of visiting Je- 
rusalem. At least, the institution of the sacred festival of the jubilee 
by which Pope Boniface VIII. drew an immense concourse of pil- 
grims to Rome, in the last year of the thirteenth century, to receive 
a general pardon for their sins, must be regarded only as a profitable 
expedient consequent upon the loss of the holy places in the East, 
which had previously attracted the stream of devotion. 




CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 453 




CHAPTER VI. 



OTons^unuts at i\it €xu^)in. 



HE causes which produced and ex- 
tinguished the Crusades are so evident, 
as to have led most inquirers to a com- 
mon conclusion on their nature and 
operations; but, in their estimate of 
the consequences of these memorable expeditions 
upon the political, moral, and religious aspect of 
society, scarcely two historians of eminence are agreed. 




454 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 

If we are to believe one celebrated writer, the most 
sanguinary and destructive wars which fanaticism ever 
produced, were the sources of unmingled good ;* if we 
are to adopt the judgment of another, yet more dis- 
tinguished, the principle and effects of the Crusades 
were analogous in their baneful tendency, and equally 
injurious in their influence upon knowledge and civili- 
zation.f According to a third reasoner, those enter- 
prises enormously augmented the papal power, and 
aggravated the prevailing superstitions;! by a fourth 
they are numbered, with some hesitation, indeed, 
among the beneficial causes of the great reformation 
of religion. II Again, though the first writer to 
whom we have here alluded thought he could discern 
in these wild expeditions the earliest gleams of light, 
which tended to dispel barbarism and ignorance, and 
w^as led to discover in them the dawn of all social im- 
provement in Europe, the ablest historian of the Cru- 
sades in our own times has denied almost all per- 
manence to their effects."[[ And lastly, while a disci- 
ple of the blind school of fatalism has seen in the con- 



* Robertson, History of Charles V. dr., Introduction, sec. 1. 
f Gibbon, Decline and Fall, &c., ch. Ixi. 

I Mosbeim, Eccles. History, Cent. xi. p. i. c. 1. sec. 8. 

II Heeren, Essai sur V Influence des Croisades, p. 139-176. 

^ Mills, History of the Crusades, vol. ii. c. 8. Sucb seems also to 
be the opinion of Mr. Hallam ; altbougb it is to be gathered less from 
expressed reasoning than from the absence of much reference to the 
effects of the Crusades, in his View of the Progress of Society during 
the Middle Ages. 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 455 

flict of Europe and Asia only some fortuitous advan- 
tages,* the eloquent champion of a religious philo- 
sophy of history has, with a far happier spirit of 
reverential inquiry, been contented to trace the bene- 
ficial designs of Omnipotence through the mingled 
evil and good of this, like every other, convulsion of 
the political and moral world.f 

The value of these various and conflicting opinions 
may perhaps best be ascertained by a distinct, though, 
within our narrow limits, necessarily a brief exami- 
nation of the forms in which the Crusades were likely 
to act upon the condition of Europe: in their influ- 
ence upon religion, upon international power, upon 
internal government, upon commerce and learning, 
and lastly upon social morals and civilization in 
general. 

I. With respect to religion, when we consider that 
the Crusades were the sources of a vast increase of 
power and wealth, and consequently of luxury and 
corruption, in the Romish Church; when we re- 
member that the detestable establishment of the In- 
quisition, and the scandalous trafiic of indulgences for 
sin at least originated in the perversion of the crusad- 
ing enthusiasm; it is impossible to deny the conclu- 
sion, that the immediate effects of that fanatical s|)irit 
were extremely j^ernicious. And it is probably the 
superficial view of these temporary evils which has 

* Heider, Outlines of a PMlowpliy of the History of Man, quoted in 
■j" Miller, Philosophy of Modern History, vol. iii. lect. xxiv. 



456 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 

misled many writers who, in natural and well-founded 
disgust at the cruelty and impurity with which they 
stained the holiness of Christianity, have overlooked 
the salutary reaction which they necessitated. Such 
inquirers, in fact, in passing an unqualified judgment 
on the mischievous results of the Crusades, have not 
distinguished between the proximate and ultimate 
consequences of those enterprises. For if, as they un- 
doubtedly did, the corruptions of the Church of Kome 
produced the reformation of religion, the very evils 
engendered by the Crusades, in nurturing and matur- 
ing the intolerable growth of ecclesiastical abuses, 
must have essentially hastened the season of their 
correction. 

II. The consequences of the Crusades, in affecting 
the distribution of international power, is a question 
which admits of less doubt. The opinion, once enter- 
tained, that those expeditions were instrumental in 
arresting the progress of the MMiammedan arms, 
seems universally exploded; nor can it be proved that 
they ultimately produced the least change in the ex- 
ternal disposition of any of the European states, 
except the maritime Italian republics. We have 
seen, indeed, that applications from the Greek Empire 
to the pope and the western potentates, for succour 
against the Seljukian Turks, preceded the First Cru- 
sade ; and it is true that Alexius Comnenus profited 

* Hallam, Middle Ages. 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 457 

by the successes of the Latins, to recover a con- 
siderable part of Asia Minor from the infidels. But, 
before the crusaders traversed that region, the Selju- 
kian power had already obeyed the usual fate of 
Asiatic dynasties, in internal decay and partition; 
and the real peril of Constantinople from the Turks 
in that age was already past, when her emperor was 
oppressed by the arrival of allies scarcely less danger- 
ous. The temporary advantages which the Greek 
Emperor extracted from the victorious passage of 
Godfrey of Bouillon and his compeers were never re- 
newed; and we may agree with a judicious historian,* 
that whatever obligations might be due to the first 
crusaders from the Eastern Empire, were cancelled by 
their descendants one hundred years afterwards, when 
the fourth in number of those expeditions was turned 
to the subjugation of Constantinople itself. Certain it 
is, that the Byzantine Empire never recovered from 
the shock and dismemberment which attended the 
Latin conquest; and the silent revival and growth of 
the new Turkish power in the mountains of Asia 
Minor, which finally overthrew the Greek Empire 
and planted the banner of the Crescent on the towers 
of Constantinople, were in no degree connected with, 
and could not be retarded by, the contest of the cru- 
saders with the Sultans of Damascus and Cairo for the 
possession of the Syrian shore. Li Western Europe 

* Hallaiu, Middle Ayes, vol. ii. p. 182. 



458 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 

itself, the Crusades left absolutely no consequences in 
the political connection of the Latin kingdoms; and 
we have only to compare their extent at the close of 
the 11th and of the loth centuries, to assure ourselves 
that neither the fate of a single dynasty, nor the 
boundaries and relative strength of nations, had at all 
been affected by the vicissitudes of the fanatical con- 
test in which they had shared. 

„ III. The influence of that contest on the internal 
government and constitution of the feudal kingdoms 
of Europe is a distinct and more difficult problem. 
Among the benefits, in these respects, which had been 
attributed to the Crusades, are the firmer establish- 
ment of regal authority, the depression of the feudal 
aristocracy, the gradual deliverance of the rural popu- 
lation from predial servitude, and the growth of mu- 
nicipal freedom. The era of the Crusades was as- 
suredly one of active and rapid improvement in social 
order and civilization; but, so far as opposite changes 
are discernible in the feudal kingdoms at the close of 
the Crusades, such results can scarcely, upon any 
sound principle of reasoning, be referred to a single 
and common cause in the influences of those enter- 
prises. Now, the same period witnessed the triumph 
of the crown over feudalism in France, the foundation 
of constitutional freedom upon the ruins of royal 
tyranny in England, and the completion of the aris- 
tocratic and municipal privileges of Germany. In the 
first of these countries, it has been proved, that of all 



V 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 459 

the great and arriere fiefs, the annexation of which to 
the crown consoHdated the royal power during the 
Crusades, not one lapsed by the extinction of a feudal 
house in those wars, and only one, the county of 
Bourges, appears clearly to have been acquired by 
purchase from a chieftain who had taken the Cross.* 
In England, on the contrary, if the Crusades had any 
^ effect upon the regal authority, it was injurious. The 
sale of the royal domains by Richard I. to defray the 
cost of his expedition to Palestine, tended, indeed, to 
throw the crown, by the dimunition of its revenues, 
into dependence upon the aristocracy; but the cir- 
cumstances which favoured the struggle of that body 
against his successors — the mingled tyranny and pu- 
sillanimity of John, and the total incapacity of his 
feeble son — were altogether foreign to the present 
subject of inquiry. In Germany, it is needless to re- 
mind the reader, that the fall of the house of Ilohen- 
stauffen, and the consequent extinction of the imperial 
authority, were as totally unconnected with the result 
of the Crusades. In a word, how is a belief in the 
general depression of the feudal aristocracy, through 
their share in those costly and distant enterprises, to 
be reconciled with their triumph, in the same ages, 
over the royal and imperial power in England and in 
Germany ? 

* Heeren, Essai sur V Influence des Croisades, p. 181-185 ; Mills, 
Hisiorij of the Crusades, yo\. ii. pp. 351-354 ; and the authorities there 
cited. 



460 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 

Equally difficult would it be to show any percept- 
ible amelioration in the condition of the peasantry of 
Europe through the influence of the Crusades; for, at 
the close of the 13th century, the chains of feudal 
tyranny remained unbroken ; the mass of the rural 
population was still in bondage to the soil, and, in 
the following age, the frightful insurrections of the 
populace in France and England reveal the con- 
tinuance of that wretched state of servitude which 
goaded their order to desperation."^' There is, there- 
fore, neither a shadow of evidence, nor even a proba- 
bility, to warrant the hypothesis, that the condition 
of the serfs of the feudal system was improved by the 
events of the Crusades; scarcely any contemporary 
though accidental changes, in this respect, can be 
traced in the same period; and the relaxation of 
predial servitude must be referred altogether to later 
ages. 

There is, however, more reason to conclude, though 

* It is singular that Gibbon, while denying in general all beneficial 
consequences to the Crusades, and contending that they checked 
rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe, should number them 
"among the causes which undermined the Gothic edifice" of Feu- 
dalism ; and assert that the poverty of the barons, whose estates 
were dissipated in these expeditions, extorted from them " those 
charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, and 
secured the farm of the peasant." Of such manumission there is no 
evidence whatevc r. It is no less singular that the great historian, in 
adopting this fanciful theory, should have overlooked, or at least 
omitted, all consideration of the real and positive benefits which 
accrued to commerce from the Crusades. 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 461 

rather from general deductions than special proofs, 
that the growth of municipal independence was at 
least favoured by the Crusades. Not that even this 
assertion is to be received without great qualifica- 
tion; for the liberties of the inland cities of Northern 
Italy arose before the commencement of those enter- 
prises, and were lost before their conclusion;* in 
Germany, also many towns on the Rhine had already, 
in the 11th century, obtained important privileges 
from Henry IV., in reward for their fidelity to that 
emperor, during his disastrous contest with the 
papacy ;f and in our own country, the chartered 
rights of cities flowed exclusively from the crown 
under circumstances which bear no imaginable rela- 
tion to crusading incidents. But, throughout the 
continent north of the Alps, and in Germany espe- 
cially, during the 12th and loth centuries, there ap- 
pears so remarkable an advance in the liberties and 
consequent jorosperity of numerous towns, that it is 
natural to attribute some share in the successful 
struggle of their inhabitants against aristocratic op- 
pression to the frequent absence of the most active 
and enterprising of their feudal seigneurs and neigh- 
bours in the holy wars ; and still more to the com- 

* " At the latter end of the 13th century, there were almost as 
many princes in the north of Italy, as there had been free cities in 
the preceding age." Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 407. 

f Heeren, Sur VlnjlxLenee des Croisades, p. 247, 248, with the 
authorities there quoted. 



462 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 

mercial impulse which was excited by those enter- 
prises. 

IV. If on any point, indeed, we may safely dissent 
from the conclusions of those historians who have 
seen no beneficial results in the Crusades, it will be 
in remarking the obvious effect of the Latin expe- 
ditions to the East, in enlarging the commerce of 
Europe. 

The rapid extension of the trade of the maritime 
Italian republics is clearly referable to their share in 
the Crusades, not only in the mere transport of 
warriors and pilgrims for hire, but in the warlike 
naval co-operation which won for them numerous 
lucrative establishments in the Levant. Thence they 
drew and poured into Europe the rich products of the 
East, and accumulated a commerce which, though not 
previously altogether unattempted, had acquired little 
activity until the commencement of the Crusades. 
Nor were its benefits by any means confined to 
Italy, or even to the shores of the Mediterranean; 
for, by inland communication, they were spread 
among the free cities of Germany, and, through the 
Straits of Gibraltar, to those English and Flemish 
ports, which formed the only entrepots for the mer- 
chandise of the Italian republics, and of the Hanse 
Towns of the North. It is not, therefore, too strong 
an assertion, that the Crusades were more instru- 
mental in the dissemination of commerce throughout 
Europe, than any other circumstances, until the dis- 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 463 

covery of the New World, and the accomplishment of 
a maritime passage to India. 

V. But no kindred injQuence of the Crusades can be 
traced in the diffusion of lettered knowledge. If^ in- 
deed, those enterprises had enriched the Western 
World with the precious stores of the ancient Greek 
literature, the result would more than have com- 
pensated for the political injuries which the crusaders 
inflicted upon the worthless and tottering edifice of 
Byzantine power. But the spirit of the ignorant 
Latins was still too barbarous to profit by a collision 
with the more cultivated, though perverted, intellect 
of the Greeks; the mutual hatred and contempt of the 
two races disdained all communion ; and so far were 
the literary treasures of Constantinople from awaken- 
ing the curiosity of her French captors, that the de- 
struction of many of the Greek classics, still extant in 
the loth century, is notoriously ascribable to the three 
calamitous conflagrations which attended the Latin 
conquest of the Eastern capital.* Nor, even, was any 
knowledge of the language of Greece imported into 
the West by the crusaders; and the true restorers of 
Greek learning in the Latin world were Petrarca and 
Boccaccio, whose exertions, in the next century after 
the Crusades, were aided by circumstances upon 
which those wars could have left no control. Nor 



* See the authenticated catalogue of these losses in Heeren, pp. 413, 
tl4. 



464 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 

can any part of the illumination for which Europe 
was indebted in the Middle Ages to the letters and 
science of the Arabians, be more correctly ascribed to 
the occupation of Palestine by the Franks. For the 
intellectual splendour of the eastern khalifate was 
extinct before the First Crusade; the rays of light 
diffused from that source had long previously pene- 
trated into the West through Spain and Italy ; many 
Latin translations of the Arabic writers had been pre- 
pared in those countries; and Toledo, Salerno, and 
Cassino were flourishing schools for the transmuted 
philosophy and learning of the Mohammedans.* 
Lastly, if the Crusades had exercised any decided 
influence on letters, we might expect to find its traces 
in the native and romantic poetry of the West, of 
which the darling theme was most congenial to the 
chivalric spirit of such enterprises. Apart, however, 
from the general and connecting link of chivalry, the 
subjects even of Trouveur and Troubadour contem- 
porary song do not much abound with references to 
the adventures of Paynim war. Some oriental colour- 
ing was, no doubt, transfused through the strains of 
the numerous minstrels who followed their lords to 
Palestine; but it is a singular fact, that, except in 
two, which relate the deeds of Godfrey of Bouillon 
and Richard Coeur de Lion, the Crusades do not form 
the subject of the romances of chivalry.f It has 

* Mills, Crusades, vol. ii. pp. 360-364. 

■\ Idem, vol. ii. p. 367, and Dunlop, History of Fiction, vol. ii. p. 140. 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 465 

been acutely remarked, that those expeditions were, 
perhaps, too recent, and too much matters of real life, 
to admit the decorations of fiction;* but neither do 
they appear to have engrossed more attention, as sub- 
jects of authentic narrative, than the other political 
events of the times; nor to have particularly quick- 
ened that fervour of historical composition which is 
usually awakened by great events, and tends by its 
excitement to stimulate the intellect of an age. In 
this respect, notwithstanding the natural interest and 
richness of their materials, and the spirit-stirring cha- 
racter of their details, the Crusades did not elicit any 
striking improvement; and though there is no lack 
of chroniclers of the Holy Wars, they are scarcely 
more numerous, or of higher merit, than the contem- 
porary national annalists of the same ages. 

VI. That the new blending of so many masses of 
men of various climes and manners in a common 
cause — the commingling, as it were, for the first time, 
of the great family of nations — and the general habit 
of foreign and distant travel — must altogether have 
given a mighty impulse to society, and dispelled many 
clouds of ignorance, in which the previous stagnation 
of intercourse had thickly shrouded the countries of 
the West — can hardly, v/e think, be doubted by any 
inquirer whose judgment has not been misled to the 
maintenance of some preconceived and favourite 



Dunlop, iibi siqmi. 
30 



466 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 

theory. But, it has been triumphantly asked,* if 
some benefits were thus necessarily communicated to 
Europe, what were they? Specific proof may, in this 
spirit, be vainly demanded of a general consequence, 
which, from its very nature, admits of none. Yet no 
man has denied the striking and steady progress of 
civilization after the 11th century; and our historian 
of the Middle Ages, in his view of society, has even 
marked the close of that century which is identical 
with the commencement of the Crusades, as the point 
which separates the extreme darkness of barbarism in 
Europe, from the dawn of a progressive renovation.* 

If the Crusades, by the stimulus which they gave to 
the commercial and general communion of nations, 
were not the principal causes of this nascent improve- 
ment during the 12th and 13th centuries, what other 
attributes, peculiar to the times, can be pointed out, 
which may be believed to have exercised so strong 
and universal an influence, as those enterprises with 
all their attendant circumstances? It has been said 
that the Crusades were altogether pernicious to 
morality, and that the absurd and cruel principles of 
superstition and fanaticism which they fostered were 
equally detrimental to religion. But here again is 
room for a caution against the confounding of proxi- 
mate and ultimate consequences. As the dissolute, 
as well as the pious, enlisted under the banner of the 

* Berington, Literari/ History of the Middle Ages, p. 269. 
t Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii. 372. 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 467 

Cross, the habits of the worst portions of society were 
not likely to be improved by the license of crusading 
camps; but the myriads, who perished amid their ex- 
cesses in the East, at least relieved their native lands 
of the burden and curse of their presence. The stern 
spirit of religious persecution, encouraged by an ex- 
terminating warfare against infidels, is the darkest 
feature in the operation of the Crusades upon the feel- 
ings and happiness of their times. The justice of the 
principles upon which those enterprises were either 
originally undertaken or subsequently perverted, is 
utterly indefensible upon all the laws of God and man ; 
nor were there, perhaps, ever any human contests, in 
themselves more thoroughly misguided and iniquitous 
than those holy wars. But in their fruits when time 
had purified the soil in which the wild and bitter 
stock of superstition was planted, they became very 
salutary to mankind. The union of a religious with 
a martial spirit, however incongruous in its origin, has 
tended, more than any other combination of senti- 
ment, to humanize not only warfare itself, but the 
ordinary relations of civilized life ; and, as the insti- 
tutions of chivalry were matured and perpetuated by 
the Crusades, we owe to those enterprises the cultiva- 
tion of all the moral qualities, of personal honour and 
fidelity to obligations, of courtesy to the one sex and 
respectful tenderness to the other, which have de- 
scended upon the modern gentleman, and survive to 
dignify and adorn the intercourse of polished society. 



■iob CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 

Ill conclusion, then, we may venture to affirm, of 
the influence and consequences of the Crusades, that, 
upon the state of religion, they were at first per- 
nicious, but ultimately beneficial ; that, upon the dis- 
tribution of national power in the European system, 
they were, altogether, or nearly, immaterial; that 
upon the internal government and constitution of the 
feudal kingdoms, they are no otherwise discernible 
than in favouring the growth of municipal freedom; 
that, in the diffusion of commerce, they were most 
important and valuable, but in that of learning 
absolutely null; that, in the commingling of nations, 
they must have given a strong and general impulse to 
the progress of civilization ; and, finally, that, at least 
by the promotion of chivalric sentiment, they were an 
obvious, though indirect and distant means of amelio- 
rating the social morals and manners of Europe. 




CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



TnE predisposing causes of those famous enterprises are generally attributed to 
the impulsive influence of religion upon the barbaric mind, the institution of chi- 
valry, the union of martial and superstitious feelings, and the influence of fanatical 
enthusiasm. But the proximate causes are seen in the persecuting frenzy of Hakcm, 
the third Fatimite khalif, and in the fanatical cruelties of Seljukian Turks. The re- 
ports of returned pilgrims respecting the insulting and savage cruelty of the latter, 
as well as the destruction of the Church of the Resurrection by the former, excited 
general indignation ; but it was not till the return of Peter Gautier, an officer of 
Amiens, who had renounced his profession in order to undertake a pilgrimage, that 
any proposal was made for attempting the expulsion of the infidels from the Holy 
Land. Peter (the Hermit) laid before Pope Urban II. a project ho had formed for 
expelling the infidels from Palestine; which, being backecl by the complaints of the 
Greek emperor, Alexis, and the urgent appeals of Peter, the pope was induced to 
espouse the projected enterprise; accordingly lie rccuuinicnded to all Christian 
princes, first at the Council of Placentia, and afterward at that of Clermont, the duty 
of zealously engaging in this holy war. At the latter council the pope obtained from 
the ambassadors present a commission for Peter Gautier to proceed forthwith in the 
prosecution of his chivalric design. The ensuing spring (1096) was appointed for 
the departure of the first army. 



TJie Crusades — Abortive Expeditions. 
1096 Peter the Hermit, issues from the 
western frontiers of France, lead- 
ing an immense concourse of the 
lowest orders. 

The rabble multitude is divided : — 

The first division, of 20,000, is led 
by Walter, the Pennyless, through 
Hungary. 

In Bulgaria they are all destroyed, 
except Walter and a few who 
escape to Constantinople. 

The second division, of 40,000 un- 
der Peter the Hermit, advance 
into Hungary. 

They destroy Malleville (Zemlin) 
and slaughter its inhabitants. 

Carloman, King of Hungary 
marches against them. 

The Bulgarians cut them off by 
thousands. 

At Nissa they are routed with 
great slaughter ; their camp is 
despoiled and their baggage plun- 
dered, &c. 

The remnant arrive at Constanti- 
nople in great distress ; they pass 
into Asia Minor. 



1096 They are nearly all cut oflf by the 
Turks in the plain of Nice ; only 
3000 escape. 

Fall of Walter, the Pennyless. 

Third division, of 15,000, from 
Germany, under Gondeuschal, a 
German monk. 

Their atrocious wickedness in Hun- 
gary ends in their ruthless mas- 
sacre at Belgrade. 

Fourth division, of 200,000, com- 
posed of one huge mass of the vile 
refuse of France, Flanders, the 
Rhenish Provinces, and England. 

They are guided by two " divinely 
inspired" animals — a goat and a 
goose. 

Massacre of Jews at Mayence and 
Spires, and other places in Ger- 
many. 

The Crusaders overthrown in Hun- 
gary. 

[" So dreadful the carnage that the 
course of the Danube was 
choked with the bodies, and its 
waters dyed with the blood of 
the slain." " Before twelve 
months had expired since the 
469 



470 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



spirit of crusading was roused 
into action by the Council of 
Clermont, and before a single 
advantage had been gained over 
the infidels, the fanatical en- 
thusiasm of Europe had already 
cost the lives, at the lowest com- 
z:^--- putation, of 250,000 of its people. 
But while the first disasters of 
the Crusade were sweeping this 
mass of corruption from the sur- 
face of society, the genuine spi- 
rit of religious and martial en- 
thusiasm was more slowly and 
powerfully evolved. With ma- 
turer preparation, and with stea- 
dier resolve, than the half-armed 
and irregular rabble, the mailed 
and organized chivalry of Europe 
was arraying itself for the mighty 
contest ; and a far different, a 
splendid and interesting spec- 
tacle opens to our view." — Proc- 
ter.] 

THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

1096 Though not undertaken by any of 
the crowned heads of Europe, 
was eagerly embraced by the 
most distinguished feudal princes 
of the second order, viz. : — 

Godfrey of Bouillon, with his two 
brothers, Eustace and Baldwin, 
and a kinsman also named Bald- 
win ; Hugh, Count of Vermau- 
dois, and Robert of Normandy, 
brothers of the French and Eng- 
lish Kings; Robert of Flanders, 
Stephen of Chartres, and Ray- 
mond of Thoulouse — the first 
temporal prince who assumed 
the crown ; Boemond, son of 
Robert Guiscard, Prince of Ta- 
rento, and his cousin Tancred. 
Order of Departure. 

The first division, under Godfrey 
consisted of the nobility of the 
Rhenish provinces and the North 
of Germany. 

Godfrey receives assistance from 
Carloman of Hungary and the 
Emperor Alexius : he peaceably 
arrives with his army on the fer- 
tile plains of Thrace. 

The second division, under the 
Counts of Vermandois and Char- 
tres, embraced the chivalry of 
Central and Northern France, 
the British Isles, Normandy, and 
Flanders. 

Their passage from Italy is op- 
posed by the Emperor Alexius, 



and Hugh is made prisoner at 
Durazzo. 

1096 Thrace ravaged by the Crusaders, 

under Godfrey, in retaliation for 
the opposition offered Hugh of 
Vermandois, by the Emperor 
Alexius. 

The third division, under Boemond 
and Tancred, composed of South- 
ern Italians — 10,000 horse, and 
20,000 foot. 

The fourth division, under the 
Count of Thoulouse, includes his 
own vassals and native confede- 
rates, comprehended under the 
general appellation of Provencals. 

1097 Godfrey at open war with Alexius: 

seizure of the bridge of Blacher- 
naj ; attack upon Constantinople. 

Hugh of Vermandois mediates. 

Messages from Boemond and the 
Count of Thoulouse, requesting 
Godfrey to defer negotiations till 
they should arrive. 

Godfrey submits ; hence an 

Accommodation between the wily 
Alexis and the crusading princes ; 
the latter swears fealty, the former 
delivers his son as hostage. 

Approach of the third division to 
the Byzantine capital. 

Boemond at first refuses to do ho- 
mage to Alexius, but afterward 
submits. 

The fourth division next ap- 
proaches — its leader, Raymond, 
sternly refuses homage to Alexius 
whom he menaces. 

Alexius craftily gains the ascen- 
dency over the mind of the aged, 
though stern, Raymond. 

Muster of the several divisions 
in the plain of Asia Minor ; 
numbers estimated — including 
100,000 mailed cavalry, and a 
prodigious number of priests, 
women, and children — at about 
700,000. 

Siege of Nice, June 20 ; it falls 
into the hands of the Greeks by 
stratagem. 

Battle of Dorylasum in July; ulti- 
mate victory of the Crusaders. 

Evacuation of Asia Minor by the 
Sultan of Roum. 

Triumphant entry of the crusading 
hosts into Syria. 

Battle between Tancred and Bald- 
win. 

Baldwin separates from the main 
body and proceeds eastward, 
victoriously overrunning the 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



471 



whole country as far as the Eu- 
phrates. 

1097 The Crusaders lay siege to Antioch. 
Famine and pestilence in the Chris- 
tian camp ; desertion of great 
numbers to Baldwin in Mesopo- 
tamia, &c. ; cowardice of the 
Duke of Normandy, Count of 
Chartres, the Viscount of Melun, 
and Peter the Hermit. 

1098 The Latin j^rindpaUty of Edcssa 

founded by Baldwin. 

Siege of Antioch renewed ; the 
Turks defeated, through the 
treachery of Phirouz ; city sur- 
prised and captured ; the Turk- 
ish garrison escape within the 
citadel. 

The Sultan of Persia unites the 
Turks against the Christian in- 
vaders; twenty-eight emirs lead 
a force of from 3000 to 4000 ca- 
valry to relieve the garrison in 
the Citadel of Antioch. 

Blockade of the Crusaders in the 
city. 

Second famine ; horrible distress, 
attended by cannibalism, and 
vice of every kind. 

Alexius abandons their relief. 

The despairing Crusaders are called 
into action by superstition and 
the imposture of a priest. 

Great battle of Antioch ; the Turks 
routed with terrible slaughter. 

Foundation of the Latin princi- 
p)ality of Antioch ; Boemond its 
ruler. 

Disunion among the crusading 
princes. 

Third famine and pestilence in 
Antioch, which sweep off 100,000 
persons — cannibalism again re- 
sorted to. 

1099 The Crusaders, now numbering 

only 1500 cavalry and 20,000 
infantry, and an equal number 
of unarmed camp followers, Ac, 
proceeded from Antioch to Jaffa 
by sea. 

Jerusalem invested by the Cru- 
saders, June. 

Sufferings of the besieged from 
thirst. 

Arrival of Genoese galleys in Jaffa; 
the mariners are brought to the 
camp to construct three mova- 
ble towers. 

Jerusalem taken by the Crusaders, 
July 15; frightful massacre of 
the Mussulmans and Jews. 

Extirpation of the Mussulman in- 



habitants; the law of conquest 
supplies to Jerusalem a new and 
Christian population. 
1099 Foundation of the Latin kingdom 
of Jerusalem ; its first king is 

Godfrey of Bouillon, elected by the 
army. 

He modestly declines the title of 
king, accepting only that of 
" Defender of the Tomb of 
Christ." 

[Thus the great design of the first 
Crusade had been accomplished, 
in the triumphant recovery of 
the Holy Sepulchre.] 

Foundation of the Knights of St. 
John of Jertisalem — the origin 
of which was an hospice founded 
in Jerusalem, in 1048, by a few 
merchants of Memphis, for the 
accommodation of pilgrims from 
Europe. An hospital for the 
sick was afterward added, hence 
the term — knights hospitallers ; 
the members of which are also 
known as the Knights of Rhodes. 
AVhen the Crusaders entered Je- 
rusalem, many of the chevaliers 
determined on joining the order — 
Godfrey granted a donation, 
which example was followed by 
other princes. To the usual vows 
of chastity, poverty, and obedi- 
dience, was added a vow to be 
always ready to fight against 
Mohammedans, and all who for- 
sook the true religion. Thus 
was the chivalric institution — 
the ofl'spring of feudalism — m.ade 
subservient to the interests of the 
church. See 1118. 

Flourishing period of chivalry. 

[On the continent, the lowest te- 
nant, by military service, was 
fully included in the pretensions 
and privileges of nobility, ex- 
cept in the case of imperial feuds, 
which were not accounted noble 
beyond the third degree of sub- 
infeiTdation. Hence the land 
which bristled with fortresses 
afforded as many titles of no- 
bility; and every country was 
filled with a numerous order of 
minor counts, barons, and vavas- 
sors — the vassals of the greater 
feudatories, and themselves each 
the chieftain of a train of knight- 
ly dependants. The least of 
these last, who was bound or en- 
titled to serve his lord as a horse- 
man or chevalier — from whence 



472 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



are derived the original distinc- 
tion, and the very name of Chi- 
valry — was a member of the 
same aristocracy as the duke or 
count, the privileges of which 
order, according to feudal cus- 
toms, formed an impassible line 
between it and the commonalty. 
The exact epoch at which Chi- 
valry acquired a religious cha- 
racter, it is not easy to determine. 
In the age of Charlemagne, the 
form of knightly investiture was 
certainly unattended by any vows 
or ecclesiastical ceremonies ; but 
in the eleventh century, it had 
become common to invoke the 
aid of religion in the inaugura- 
tion of the knight. There is 
abundant proof, however, of the 
success of the church, before the 
Crusades, in infusing some re- 
ligious principle into the martial 
spirit of Chivahy. The original 
obligations of this institution in- 
cluded loyalty and honour, cour- 
tesy and benevolence, generosity 
to enemies, protection to the 
feeble and the oppressed, and 
respectful tenderness to wo- 
man.] 

1099 Approach of a great Fatimite army, 

swelled by Turks and Saracens. 

Battle of Ascalon ; the Crusaders 
victorious ; they acquire much 
booty. 

The princes depart for Europe, ex- 
cept Tancred, who remains with 
Godfrey. 

Daimbort, patriarch of Jerusalem. 

1100 Capture of Eoemond, prince of An- 

tioch, by an Arminian chieftain. 

Death of Godfrey, aged 40, five 
days preceding the tirst anniver- 
sary of his reign. 

Baldwin I. prince of Edessa, elected 
king of Jerusalem : he resigns to 

Baldwin du Bourg, the brother of 
Godfrey, the principality of 
Edessa. 

1101 First Crusade by land; or 
Supplementary Crusade under 

Counts Vermandois aad Char- 
tres. 

1102 Vermandois is wounded in a battle 

with the Mussulmans of Cilicia; 
dies at Tarsus; 
Rash assault by a vanguard upon 
the Egyptian invaders ; Chartres 
taken and murdered; Baldwin 
rescued from death by a grateful 
emir. 



A. D. 

1103 



1104 



1106 



llOS 
1109 



1111 



1112 



1113 



1117 
1118 



Azotus reduced by Baldwin ; the 
siege of Acre formed. 

Arrival of 70 Genoese ships with 
Crusaders, which results in the 
Conquest of Acre by Baldwin I. 

The Count of Tholouse is joined by 
several French princes, who had 
arrived in the Supplemental Cru- 
sade, (1101.) 

Tortosa taken by Raymond. 

Bertrand, son of Raymond, effects 
the conquest of Tripoli. 

Tripoli and its vicinity erected into 
a county, by Baldwin, for the 
house of Thoulouse. Hence 
" County of Tripoli." 

The Crusaders take Berytus. 

Sidon captured by the Crusaders. 

[With an interval of four years, 
two fleets of Scandinavian cruis- 
ers, who had performed the long 
voyage from the Baltic, through 
the Straits of Gibraltar, to the 
Syrian shores, co-operated with 
the Christian forces of Palestine, 
in the siege of Sidon. Although 
the first attempt was repulsed, 
the second proved successful.] 

Critical position of the State of 
Edessa, surrounded by Arme- 
nians and Turks. 

Heroic exploits of its prince, Bald- 
win du Bourg, and his relative, 
Joscelyn de Courtenay. 

Arrival of largo numbers of pil- 
grims and Crusaders from Eu- 
rope. 

The order of Knights Hospitallers 
of St. John confirmed by Papal 
Bull. 

The Suljuk Turks of Aleppo, Da- 
mascus, and Iconium, aided by 
Mohammedans of Arabia, Egypt, 
and Persia, harass and often de- 
feat the Crusaders. 

Birth of Noureddin, the younger 
son of Zenghi, second of the At- 
tabek princes. 

Expedition against Egj'pt conduct- 
ed by Baldwin. 

Death of Baldwin I. (in March) on 
his march toward Egypt; his 
cousin. 

Baldwin II. (Prince of Edessa) 
King of Jerusalem. 

The order of Knights Hospitallers 
of the order of St. John (called 
also Knights of Malta) becomes 
a military order. Hence 

Knights Templars : institution of 
the order of the Temple of Solo 
mon. 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



4:7. 



[The object of the institution of 
this order was to act in a mili- 
tary capacity to protect pilgrims. 
See T099. 

[The military orders were, in the 
first instance, subjected to the 
rule of St. Augustin ; modified, 
of course, in some degree, by the 
peculiar object of their institution. 
The most ancient of these was 
the order of the Knights Hospi- 
tallers of St. John of Jerusalem, 
established in the first instance 
(1048) for the reception and care 
of pilgrims visiting the holy city. 
This order became monastic in 
1092, and in 1118 added the 
military qualification.] 
1120 Zenghi, governor of Mosul, (1145, 

1146.) 
1124 Tyre reduced by Baldwin II., aided 
by the Doge of Venice, who ob- 
tains the sovereignty of one-third 
of the city. 

[All the maritime republics of Italy, 
with their characteristic mercan- 
tile cupidity, extorted great com- 
mercial advantages, as the price 
of their services to the Crusaders. 
And throughout the Christian 
possessions in Palestine and 
Syria generally, the three re- 
publics of Genoa, Pisa, and A^e- 
nico contended, often with blood- 
shed, for the right of establishing 
places of exchange, and enjoying 
the common or exclusive privi- 
leges of trade.] 

Archbishopric of Tyre established. 

Extension of the Latin kingdom of 
Jerusalem, from the sea-coast to 
the deserts of Arabia, and from 
the city of Beritus, on the north, 
to the frontiers of Egypt, on the 
south, forming a territory about 
60 leagues in length, and 30 in 
breadth ; and exclusive of the 
county of Tripoli, which stretched 
northward from Beritus to the 
borders of the Antiochian princi- 
pality. 
1131 Abdication of Baldwin, with the 
consent of his nobles and prelates, 
in favour of his son-in-law. 

Foulques (of Anjou) King of Jeru- 
salem. 

Baldwin retires to a convent. 
1144 Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem, 
(13 years old,) in conjunction 
with his mother, Melesinda. 

[Soon after the martial sceptre of 
the house of Bouillon had de- 



volved upon a woman and a 
minor, the Christian power in 
the East began to decline.] 

1145 Fall of Edessa; Zenghi, the Turk- 

ish emir of Aleppo, takes it by 
storm. 

Indignation excited in Europe by 
the event. 

St. Bernard preaches a Second Cru- 
sade, which is promoted by Louis 
of France. 

[At the soul-stirring exhortations 
of St. Bernard, the great feuda- 
tory princes of Bavaria, Bohe- 
mia, Carinthia, Piedmont, and 
Styria, with a crowd of inferior 
chieftains, assumed the cross ; 
and the conversion of the empe- 
ror Conrad III., after some strug- 
gle between the sense of political 
interest and religious duty, com- 
pleted the triumijh of the pious 
orator.] 

Decline of the power of the Cru- 
saders. 

1146 Zenghi murdered by his own troops 

at the siege of Jabbar ; his son, 
Noureddin, the third of the 
dynasty of the Attabeks of Syria, 
becomes King of Aleppo and 
Damascus, 
lie maintains war against the Cru- 
saders. 

1147 The Second Crusade; led by the 

Emperor Conrad III., and by 
Louis VII., King of France. 

[The number of the Crusaders has 
been estimated as approaching 
near to a million ; of which 70,000 
were mailed cavalry, and 250,000 
were trained infantry, the rest 
were clergy, pilgrims, women, 
and camp followers.] 

Treacherous policy of Comnenus, 
the Greek emperor; he harasse."; 
the crusaders in their march 
through Bulgaria. 

Conrad, on arriving at Constanti- 
nople, indignantly refuses to 
have an interview with Comne- 
nus. 

Louis arrives at Constantinople 
after the departure of Conrad; ho 
accepts the apologies, and is in- 
duced to delay his march, by the 
treacherous emperor. 

Almost total destruction of the im- 
perial army in the passes of Ly- 
c.aonia by the Sultan of Iconium. 

Louis encamps at Nice ; here he is 
joined by Conrad and the rem- 
nant of the imperial army. 



474 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



A. D. 

]147 



1148 



1149 



1150 



1151 



1153 
1162 



The united forces come to Ephe- 
sus ; here they separate — the 
Germans proceed by sea to Pa- 
lestine ; the French by land. 

Sanguinarj' defeat of the Turks by 
Louis, on the banlis of the 
Meander. 

Surprise and defeat of Louis in the 
mountains between Pisidia and 
Phrygia; narrow escape of the 
king. 

Retreat upon the port of Attalia. 

Louis transports his nobles and 
knights by sea to Palestine. 

The infantry and pilgrims left be- 
hind perish, either by the cime- 
tars of the Turks, or the unnatu- 
ral cruelty of the Greeks. 

The sovereigns of Jerusalem, Ger- 
many, and France, resolve on re- 
ducing Damascus. 

Great victory of Saladin over the 
Christians at Antioch ; Ray- 
mond is killed, Joseelyn do 
Courtenay made prisoner. 

Unsuccessful siege of Damascus. 

Return of Louis ; he lands at St. 
Gilles on the Rhone, in October. 

[Louis left Metz in 1147, at the 
head of 70,000 knights, mounted 
and armed, and a band of in- 
fantry and camp followers, 
amounting to about 200,000. 
lie returned a fugitive, with 
about .300 followers, in barks 
furnished by Sicily.] 

Return of Conrad with the misera- 
ble remnant of his armj\ 

[Thus ended abortively the second 
Crusade, leaving the Christian 
cause in Palestine again desert- 
ed, save by the scanty bands, 
but enduring courage of its ha- 
bitual defenders.] 

Increasing danger of the Latin 
kingdom of Palestine from the 
arms of Noureddin, the Attabek 
of Aleppo. 

Victory of Baldwin III. over the 
Turks at Jericho. 

Ascalon falls by the chivalry of 
Baldwin. 

Death of Baldwin III. : his brother 

Almen'c, succeeds as King of Je- 
rusalem. 

[Though Baldwin was destitute of 
any high degree of ability,.his 
character was graced by many 
noble and chivalric qualities. 
As he left no children, he was 
succeeded by his brother Almo- 
ric, whose equal mediocrity of 



1102 

11G3 

1167 

1168 
1169 



1171 



1173 



1176 
1177 
1183 



1186 



1187 



talent was unrelieved by the same 
virtues.] 
Almeric neglects immediate dan- 
gers, and wastes his energies in 
projects for the conquest of 

Victory of Almeric over Shira- 
couch. 

Pelusium besieged and taken. 

Surprise and sanguinary defeat of 
Almeric, near Artesia, by Nou- 
reddin. 

Second signal defeat of Shiracouch 
on the Egyptian frontiers; the 
Turks capitulate and engage to 
evacuate Egypt. 

Project of Almeric for the perma- 
nent subjugation of Egypt. 

Pelusium taken, and cruelly sacked 
by Almeric. 

He advances before the wall of 
Cairo. 

Death of Noureddin. 

Failure of the project of Almeric, 
owing to the faithlessness of the 
Greek Emperor and the craft of 
the vizier Shaweer. 

Retreat of Almeric into Palestine. 

Rise of Sallah-u-deen, or Saladin — 
the scourge of the Christian 
fortunes in Palestine. 

Saladin deposes the sons of Nou- 
reddin, and unites under his sway 
all the Mussulman states from 
the Kile to the Tigris. 

Dissensions and weakness of the 
Latin kingdom of Palestine. 

Death of Almeric ; his son 

Baldwin IV. (a leper) King of Je- 
rusalem. 

Regency of the king's sister, Sy- 
billa, and her husband, Guy de 
Lusignan. 

Disaffection of the barons of Pales- 
tine. 

Siege of Alexandria. 

Defeat of Saladin before Jerusalem. 

Abdication of Baldwin IV. ; his 
nephew 

Baldwin V. (an infant) under the 
protection of Joseelyn de Courte- 
nay. 

Raymond, regent of the kingdom. 

Subjugation of Aleppo by Saladin. 

Death of the ex-king, Baldwin IV. 

Suspicious death of Baldwin V. 

Guy de Lusignan, King of Jeru- 
salem. 

Civil war; Raymond of Tripoli 
allies himself with Saladin 
against Lusignan. 

Saladin demands redress for an 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



475 



outrage perpetrated by Reginald 
de Chatillon. 

Lusignan refuses justice, where- 
upon 

Saladin invades Palestine with an 
army of 80,000 horse and foot. 

Battle of Tiberias ; sanguinary de- 
feat of the Crusaders ; Guy de 
Lusignan made prisoner; Cha- 
tillon decapitated by Saladiu 
himself, and 230 of the Knights 
of St. John taken prisoners and 
inhumanly murdered by his 
orders. 

[The Christians were betrayed by 
the Count of Tripoli. See 1086.] 

Fall of Csesarea, Acre, Jaffa, and 
Beritus. 

Tyre besieged; Saladin abandons 
the siege and marches against 
Jerusalem. 

Saladin takes Jerusalem, October 2. 

[Thus after a possession, by the 
Christians, of 88 years, Jeru- 
salem was again defiled by the 
religion and empire of the vota- 
ries of Mohammed.] 

Fall of Bethlehem, Nazareth, As- 
calon, and Sidon. 

Tyre, defended by Conrad of Mont- 
ferrat, holds out against Saladin. 

[The news of the fall of Jerusalem, 
&c., filled all Western Christen- 
dom with horror and grief.] 

A " Saladine" tithe is exacted in 
Europe for fitting out armaments 
for Palestine. 

1188 Popular expeditions preceding 

THE THIRD CRUSADE — by Sea. 

["AH the principal sovereigns of 
Europe, except those of Spain, 
vowed to lead their national 
forces to the recovery of Jeru- 
salem ; but even their earnest 
preparations were too tardy for 
popular impatience."] 

Myriads arrive in Palestine from 
the ports of Italy, the Baltic, the 
North Sea, England, and the 
Mediterranean, at their own ex- 
pense. 

1189 Siege of Acre commenced; 100,000 

Crusaders, led by many noble- 
men and prelates under Lusig- 
nan appear before the city. 
[" On both sides the frightful con- 
sumption of human life was fed 
by new arrivals ; and during 
nearly two years the strength of 
Christendom and Islam was con- 
centrated and exhausted in an 



indecisive conflict before the 
single city of Acre."] 

1189 Departure of King Richard from 

England, Dec. 11. 

1190 Richard L of England, and Philip- 

Auguste of France, assemble 
their forces (amounting to 
100,000 men) on the plain of 
Vezelay, July 1. 

Louis departs from Genoa for 
SicUy. 

Richard's army sails from Mar- 
seilles. 

Violent proceedings of King Ri- 
chard toward Tancred, &c., in 
Sicily. 

Dissensions between Louis and 
Richard. 

Frederic (Barbarossa) defeats the 
Sultan of Iconium, who sues for 
peace. 

Death of Frederic — drowned while 
attempting to swim across the 
river Calycadnus in Cilicia, 
June 10. 

The Duke of Suabia takes the com- 
mand. 

Antioch taken by the imperial 
army. 

Fearful destruction of life in the 
army of the German Crusaders. 

Institution of Teutonic Order of 
knights. 

[About GO years before this time, 
a German crusader and his lady 
founded hospitals in Jerusalem 
for poor pilgrims, of both sexes, 
of their nation; and when sub- 
sequent endowments had en- 
riched these houses, the male 
brethren devoted themselves to 
military, as well as charitable 
services. But their efforts had 
obtained little distinction ; and 
their fraternity was dissolved by 
the expulsion of the Christians 
from Jerusalem. Its purposes 
were now recalled to the na- 
tional attention by the private 
charity of some individuals 
among the German army, who 
opened their tents for the recep- 
tion of their sick and wounded 
countrymen. A number of 
knights having joined this be- 
nevolent association, the Duke 
of Suabia seized the occasion to 
incorporate them into a regular 
order of religious chivalry. Nolo 
to 1099. 

Arrival of Philip of France before 
Acre from Sicily. 



47G 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



Conquest of Cyprus by King 

Richard. 
Richard's fleet dispersed by a 

storm. 

1191 A Mussulman troop-ship, manned 

by 1,500 hands, destroyed by 
Richard. 

Arrival of the English before Acre, 
June 10. 

King Richard insults Leopold of 
Austria before Acre. 

Acre capitulates, July 12,- 5,000 
hostages left by Saladin, till the 
ransom money of 200,000 pieces 
of gold should be paid. 

[The conquest was dearly acquired 
by the loss of 100,000 Chris- 
tians.] 

Cold-blooded massacre of the Mus- 
sulman hostages; followed by 
the retaliating slaughter of the 
captive Christians by Saladin. 

Open rupture between Richard 
and Philip. 

Philip of France retires from the 
crusade, leaving 10,000 of his 
troops under the Duke of Bur- 
gundy. 

Conrad, Prince of Tyro, King of 
Jerusalem. 

Assassination of Conrad ; followed 

by 

Marriage of Henry, Count of Cham- 
pagne, with Conrad's widow; 
hence 

Heart/, of Champagne, King of Je- 
rusalem. 

The kingdom of Cyprus found. 

King Richard departs from Acre 
at the head of the combined 
army, 30,000 strong. 

The Crusaders winter on the coast. 

1192 Arrival of the Christian host in the 

valley of Ilebron ; terror of the 
infidels. 

The Austrians desert the Crusade ; 
also the Duke of Burgundy and 
the French. 

Unexpected retreat of the Crusaders 
from before Jerusalem. 

Jaffa seized by Saladin. 

(iallant exploits of Richard at 
Askelon, &c. 

Battle of Askelon, (called by some 
battle of Ashdod or Azotus;) de- 
feat of Saladin; 20 emirs and 
40,000 Turks and Saracens (in- 
cluding 7000 cavalry) killed, 
September 7. 

Ascalon, Jaffa, Cossarea, and other 
places, fall into the hands of the 
Crusaders. 



?192 



1192 Truce for three years between Sala- 
din and Richard; the latter dis- 
mantles Ascalon, and the former 
engages not to molest Tyre, 
Acre, Jaffa, Antioch, and Tripoli, 
and to grant free access to all 
Christians visiting Jerusalem. 

Departure of Richard's fleet, hav- 
ing on board his queen, sister, 
and the daughter of the captive 
king of Cyprus. 

Richard sails from Acre, October, 9. 

End of the third Crusade. 

Richard lands at Corfu in Novem- 
ber, and leaves it about the 
middle of the same month. 

Death of Saladin, March 4. 

[He is perhaps, the brightest ex- 
emplar in history of an Asiatic 
hero ; and his virtues, like the 
dark traits which obscured them, 
exhibit the genuine lineaments 
of his clime and race.] 

Division of Saladin's empire; his 
brother. 

Saphadin reigns in S3Tia, while 
his three sons erect distinct 
thrones at Cairo, Damascus, and 
Aleppo. 

1194 A new Crusade preached in Ger- 

many. 

1195 Crusade of German chivalry j three 

great armaments under the guid- 
ance of nobles and prelates sue- 
sessively arrive at Acre. 

Union of the Mussulman powers of 
Egypt and Syria against the 
Crusaders. 
1190 Indecisive results of this campaign. 

Jerusalem still in the hands of the 
infidels. 

1197 Death of Henry, nominal king of 

Jerusalem. 

Almeric of Lusignam marries the 
widow of Henry, and is recog- 
nised King of Jerusalem and 
Cyprus, (1191.) 

A fourth Crusade promoted by In- 
nocent III. 

1198 Folques of Neuilly atones for a life 

of sin by preaching a new Cru- 
sade. 
[" Without the rude originality of 
Peter the Hermit, or the learning 
of St. Bernard, he, nevertheless, 
kindled the flame of religious 
enthusiasm throughout Flanders 
and France."] 
1200 Many French barons, <fcc. take 
the Cross; the chief promoter is 
Thibaud, Count of Champagne. 
The barons of France implore, 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



477 



upon their knees, the maritime 
aid of Venice. 

1200 The Venetians agree to convey the 

armaments to Palestine for 
85,000 silver marks. 

1201 The Crusade delayed— 1st, by the 

death of Thibaud ; 2d, by dis- 
sensions among the leaders ; 3d, 
by the deficiency of 30,000 marks 
to pay for transhipment. 

TITR FOURTH CRUSADE. 

1202 Departure of the Crusaders, under 

the Marquis of Montscrrat ; 
Zara captured ; denunciations of 
the pope; return of De Mount- 
fort; new destination of the ar- 
mament, owing to the successful 
negotiations of the friends of 
j'oung Alexius with the Latin 
barons, &c., to replace his father 
on the throne of the East, which 
his uncle had usurped. 

1203 The Crusaders sail for Constanti- 

nople. 

Negotiations with Alexius ; siege. 

Flight of Alexius ; Isaac restored. 

Disunion between the Latins and 
Greeks. 

Young Alexius induces the Cru- 
saders to defer their expedition 
till the next year. 

Third part of Constantinople burned 
in a feud. 

The Crusaders demand the fulfil- 
ment of Alexiu.s's pecuniary agree- 
ment; they defy the two empe- 
rors, which leads to 

Open hostilities ; the Crusaders and 
the Greeks at war. 
4204 Revolution in Constantinople ; the 
two emperors deposed by Mour- 
zoufle ; Alexius is murdered. 

Death of Isaac in prison. 

Second siege of Constantinople. 

Treaty of partition by the Cru- 
saders. 

Capture of Constantinople, April 12. 

A second conflagration; destruc- 
tion of the remains of ancient 
letters and art, &c. 

Pillage; public distribution of the 
spoils. 

Baldwin, of Flanders, the first 
Latin Emperor of the East. 

The Eastern kingdom divided be- 
tween the Latin barons and the 
Venetians. 

Capture of Mourzoufle; he is 
thrown from the summit of the 
Theodosian pillar. 

Theodore Lascaris devotes himself 



to the rescue of his country from 
the Latin domination. 

1201: End of the Fourth Crusade. 

[In the division and enjoyment of 
a conquered empire, tihe confede- 
rated barons seemed lo have for- 
gotten the original object of their 
expedition ; and tlie vain trophies 
of a viotorj-, not over Paynim, 
but Christian enemies — the gates 
and chain of the harbour of Con- 
stantinople — sent by the new 
Emperor of the East to Palestine, 
were the only fruits of the fourth 
Crusade, which ever reached the 
Syrian shores.] 

1204 Truce with Saphidin for six years. 
["The cupidity of the leaders of 
the fourth Crusade occasioned 
the loss of the fairest opportunity 
of re-establishing the Christian 
fortunes in Palestine. The dis- 
sensions of the Mussulman 
princes, and the ravages of a 
dreadful famine, and consequent 
pestilence in Egypt, would have 
effectually paralyzed all oppo- 
sition from that dangerous quar- 
ter to the success of the crusad- 
ing arms. But the hopes ex- 
cited for the Christian cause 
were completely lost in the di- 
version of the fourth Crusade 
against the Eastern Empire. 

1210 John de Urienne, King of Jeru- 

salem. 
Saphidin a.pplies for a prolongation 
of the truce, which the Latins 
refuse. 

1211 The Mussulman arms are success- 

ful against the Latins, who are 
in great straits. 

1213 Appeal of John De Brienne to the 

pope for succour against the in- 
fidels. 

1214 The pope decrees another Crusade. 

1215 The 4:th Lateran council zealously 

adopt 

THE FIFTH CRUSADE — by Sea. 

1217 First expedition, the Hungarian 
Crusaders under their King An- 
drew. 
Second expedition ; Germans, Ita- 
lians, French, English, under 
Duke of Austria. 

1217 Abortive campaign of King Andrew. 
The Turks expel the Saracens from 

Jerusalem. 

1218 Return of Andrew of Hungary. 
Numerous accessions from Ger- 
many. 



478 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



A. D. 

1218 



1219 



1220 



1221 
1224 



1125 



1228 



1229 



1230 



The Crusaders invade Egypt. 

Siege and capture of Damietta. 

Two of the sons of Saphidin, Cora- 
dinus, and Camel, offer the ces- 
sion of Jerusalem, on condition 
that the Crusaders evacuate 
Egypt. 

This most acceptable offer rejected, 
through the cupidity of the papal 
legate. 

Disastrous condition of the Crusa- 
ders near Cairo; the legate sues 
for peace. 

Peace purchased by the surrender 
of Damietta to the Sultan of 
Cairo. 

Disgraceful return of the Crusaders 
from Egypt to Acre. 

Embassy of Herman de Saltza, 
Grand-Master of the Teutonic 
knights, to the Emperor Frede- 
ric, offering him the hand of 
lolanta, daughter and heiress of 
John de Brienne, King of Jeru- 
salem. 

Marriage of the Emperor Frederic 
and lolanta; her dower consist- 
ing of the transfer of the sove- 
reign rights of her father to 
Frederic. 

Frederic promises to lead an army 
into Palestine, for its reconquest, 
within two years. 

Frederic (emperor) arrives in Pa- 
lestine with a reinforcement in 
28 galleys. 

Difficulties of Frederic, arising 
from the iniquitous persecution 
of the pope. 

Negotiations with the Sultan Cora- 
dinus ; peace concluded for ten 
years ; free access to Jerusalem 
granted to the Christians; with 
possession of Bethlehem, Naza- 
reth, &c. 

Frederic crowns himself in Jeru- 
salem ; the patriarch having re- 
fused to perform the ceremony. 

Return of Frederic to Germany; and 

End of the Fifth Crusade. 

Death of the Empress lolanta in 
giving birth to a son. 

Civil war; struggle for the crown 
between the partisans of Frederic, 
and those of Alice, widow of 
Hugh de Lusignan. 

Reconciliation effected by the me- 
diation of Pope Gregory IX. 

Renewal of hostilities between the 
Emirs of Syria and the Latins. 

Several thousand pilgrims slaugh- 
tered. 



1230 Sanguinary defeat of the Knights 
Templars, by the Emir of Aleppo. 

1232 Another Crusade projected by the 
Council of Sjioletto : the Domi- 
nicans and Franciscans are au- 
thorized to preach it. 
Appropriation of the moneys col- 
lected for the Crusade, by the 
pope and his agents. 

1235 Armenia seized by the Mogols. 

1236 The Christians expelled from Je- 

rusalem by the Sultan of Egypt. 

1237 Martial and religious enthusiasm 

excited throughout Europe. 
The nobles of France and England 
take the Cross. 

The Sixth Crusade — two expeditions. 

1238 I. Expedition of the French Cru- 

s.aders under Thibaud, Count of 
Champagne, Duke of Burgundy, 
&a. 

Defeat of the Crusaders at Gaza; 
Count de Bar slain. Armory de 
Montfort. and many nobles and 
knights taken captive. 

Retreat of the King of Navarre 
upon Acre. 

The French leaders, &e. return 
home. 

II. Expedition of Richard, Earl of 
Cornwall, who lands at Acre, ac- 
companied by the flower of the 
English chivalry. 

His arrival strikes the Mussulmans 
with terror, and inspires the 
Christians with confidence. 

Richard demands the restoration 
of the prisoners taken at the 
battle of Gaza. 

He marches upon Jaffa; but 

The Sultans of Egypt and Damas- 
cus hasten to negotiate for peace. 

1240 Jerusalem restored to the Chris- 

tians. 

Restoration of 600 Christian prison- 
ers. 

Return of Richard, Earl of Corn- 
wall. 

End of the Sixth Crusade. 

1241 The fortifications of Jerusalem re- 

built by the Knights Templars. 
The ravages of the Moguls in Asia 

Minor drive several tribes into 

Syria for settlements. One of 

these tribes — 
The Kharizmian horde, (20,000 

cavalry,) under Barbacan, enter 

Palestine, being guided by an 

Egyptian emir. 

1242 Jerusalem captured by Barbacan, 

and finally lost to the Christians. 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



479 



A. D. 

1242 Imliscriminate massacre of the in- 

habitants ; pillage of the city ; 
general ruin. 
The Knights Templars unite with 
the Moslems of Damascus, Alep- 
po, Ems, against the Egyptians 
and Kharizmians. 

1243 Terrible defeat of the Christian 

chivalry and their Moslem allies. 

Fall of Tiberias, Ascalon, <fec. 

Palestine overrun by the Khariz- 
mians. 

1244 The Christian chivalry confined to 

Acre. 

Disunion between the Kharismians 
and Egyptians ; the former ex- 
pelled from Palestine. 

Iloly Sepulchre in the hands of 
infidels. 
The SEVENTn Crusade. 

1245 The new Crusade was resolved 

upon at the Council of Lyons ; 

temporal wars to be suspended 

for four years. 

usade embraced in England and 

France. 

1247 Cyprus the rendezvous of the 

French Crusaders ; here they 
spend 8 months. 

1248 Louis sails for Egypt with 1800 

vessels, and 50,000 men. 

[In imitation of the plan of the 
fifth Crusade, Egypt, as the 
principal seat of the Moslem 
power, was again selected for 
the theatre of operations.] 

A storm disperses the fleet; onlj' 
700 knights, under the king, 
make the port. 

Panic of the Mussulmans; they 
evacuate Damietta to the 
French. 

Arrival of those dispersed by the 
storm, with a body of English 
nobles under William Long- 
sword. 

March of the French toward Cairo. 

1249 Rashness of the Count d'Artois at 

Mansora ; himself, WiUiam 
Long.sword, and a host of 
knights slain. 

Death of Nedjmeddin, Sultan of 
Egypt. 

Louis defeats the Moslems at Man- 
sora. 

Crusaders in distress ; famine and 
pestilence make frightful ravages 
among them. 

1250 Total rout of the Crusaders at Man- 

sora, and capture of Louis ; de- 
struction of at least 30,000 Chris- 
tians. 



A. D. 

1250 



1253 



1254 



1255 



1257 



1260 
12(53 



1265 
1266 



1267 
1268 



1269 



Revolution in Egj'pt; Louis in 
danger. 

Surrender of Damietta to the 
Turks, April 5, in exchange for 
the king and nobles. 

The king proceeds to Acre ; but 
most of his nobles return home. 

[During four years, the treasures 
which Louis was enabled to 
raise were lavislily expended in 
refortifying Jaffa, Casarea, Si- 
don, and Acre.] 

Dissensions among the Moslem 
emirs of Syria and Egypt; hence 
the hopes of the Christians re- 
rive. 

Renewal of hostilities; the Moslem 
hordes approach Acre, but soon 
retire. 

The news of the death of the 
queen -mother of Franco hastens 
the 

Departure of Louis for Eui'ope. 

End of the Seventh Crusade. 

Commercial and political rivalry 
of the Venetian States the cause 
of troubles in Palestine. 

Disunion between the several 
orders. 

Sanguinary battles between the 
Templars and Knights Hospital- 
lers ; complete and merciless de- 
struction of the former. 

Preparations of the Templars in 
Europe for inflictiiig a desperate 
vengeance upon tlie Hospitallers. 

Approach of the Mamelukes ; oc- 
cupation of Damascus and 
Aleppo. 

Mameluke invasions, under Bon- 
docdar. 

Desperate and unequal battles be- 
tween the now united orders and 
the Mamelukes*^ 

Loss of Azotus; Latins put to the 
sword. 

Surrender of Saphoury ; Bondocdar 
(or Bibars) treacherously violates 
his treaty, and murders all his 
prisoners. 

Loss of Cajsarea, Laodicea, and 
Jaffa. 

Fall of Antioch before Bibars of 
Egypt; massacre of 40,000 (?) 
Christians; 100,000 are sold as 
slaves. 

Antioch abandoned to desolation 
and ruin. 

Acre is alone in the hands of the 
Christians. 

Another Crusade is proposed and 
eagerly adopted in Europe. 



480 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 



A. D. 

Thb Eighth and Last Crusade, 1274 

1270 Undertaken by Louis IX., but di- 
verted to Africa. (See France.) 

Prince Edward of England sepa- 1276 
rates from the French before 
Tunis, and proceeds to Sicily. 

1271 From Sicily he departs for Pales- 

tine at the head of about 1000 
Englishmen. 12S0 

Edward arrives in Palestine 
May. 

The report of his arrival strikes 1289 
Bondocdar with terror : he re- 
tires from before Acre. 

Edward, with only 9000 men, 
marches against the infidels, and 
routs them with slaughter. 

Assault on Nazareth ; capture of 

the city, and dreadful slaughter 1290 
of the Moslems. 

Edward's army fall victims to dis- 
ease. 

Edward is himself taken ill. 

Narrow escape from assassination ; 1391 
Edward kills the assassin, (a i <i 
Mussulman.) 

[None of the writers contemporary 
with this event knew any thing 
of that beautiful fiction — the 
creation of a much later age — 
which ascribes the recovery of 
Edward to the aifectionate de- 
votion of his consort, Eleanor, in 
sucking the venom from his 
wounds.] 

Truce for ten years offered by the 
Sultan of Egypt; accepted by 
Edward. 

1272 Edward and his wife Eleanor re- 

turn home. 
End of the Eighth Crusade. 



Pope Gregory X. endeavours to re- 
vive the crusading spirit in 
Europe. 

The Latins twice plunder the 
peaceable Moslem traders ; sa- 
tisfaction for which Keladun, 
Sultan of Egypt, vainly de- 
mands. 

Invasion of Palestine by the Mame- 
lukes, who renew their ravages 
every year. 

Dismemberment of the county of 
Tripoli from the Latin kingdom, 
by the Mamelukes. 

Tyre and Sidon destroyed by the 
Turks, so that they might not 
afford protection any longer to 
the Christians. 

Further outrages on Mussulman 
merchants by the inhabitants of 
Acre. 

Sultan Khatil demands reparation : 
denied. 

Khatil, having vowed to extermi- 
nate the faithless Franks, leads 

' an army of 200,000 men against 
Acre. 

Fall of Acre, the last Christian pos- 
session in Palestine. 

End of the War of the Crusades. 

[•■ The cessation of the Crusades 
was not produced by any abate- 
ment of the love of arms, or of 
the thirst of glory, in the chi- 
valry of Europe. But the union 
with these martial qualities of 
that fanatical enthusiasm which 
inspired the Christian warriors 
of the eleventh century, had 
been slowly, and almost tho- 
roughly dissolved."] 



THE END. 



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